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THE 



AFTERPIECE 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 

IN TWO SCENES. 






THE REV. EDWARD j!^STEARNS, A.M., 

OP THB DIOCESE OP MAKTLAND. 



|T ^ J - \,T : - : • : J- T 

I said * * * of mirth, what doeth it ? 

EccLEs. ii. 2. 



AcaKovovg oyGavTog aejuvovg^ firj dcAoyovg. 

Likeirise must the (arch)deacons be grave, not doubletongued. 1 Tim. iii 



" You laugb ; 'tis -well : the tale, applied^ x " 
Will make you laugh on the other sid^.''-,' ^ 
CowperS 



C^ HARTFORD : 
PUBLISHED BY THE CHUECH PRESS COMPAN'Y, 
BxiLTIMORE: , 
HENEY TAYLOR & CO., SUN BLTLDING. 
1870. 




^i*'^'' 

#^, 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

EDWARD J. STEARNS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Maryland. 



CHURCH PKBSS COMPANY, 

PmNTSRS, STEREOtYPERS, AXP KlECTROTVPKKS, 

HARTFORD, CONN. 



^i 






TO 

HIS HOLINESS 
POPE PIUS THE NINTH, 

AND TO THE 

BISHOPS AND OTHER MEMBERS 

OF THE 

PAN-LATIN SYNOD 

NOW 
THESE PAGES ARE 



DEAMATIS PERSONS. 

Father Casula^ of The Company of Jesus ; from England. 

Father Kayeo, not of The Company ; from the United States. 

The Rev. P. O^Kaye, Priest "after the order of" St. Peter; appearing on 
the stage in propria persona, i, e., through his mouthpiece, Father 
Kayeo. 



II^TEODUOTOET. 

As some who may read these pages may not have 
seen the Comedy^ it may not be superfluous to state 
that it is the work of some Reverend, or Irreverend, 
member of the Roman Communion, that it has for 
motto, from St. Gregory Nazianzen, " Give me leave 
to be merry on a merry subject," that it is dedicated 
to "The Bishops of the Pan- Anglican Synod," and 
that in it are represented Very Reverend Deans, Ven- 
erable Archdeacons, and Reverend Do.ctors and Proc- 
tors, of the Church of England, in Convocation assem- 
bled, gravely debating the question whether, in that 
Church, it is heresy to deny the existence of a God, 
and as gravely coming to the conclusion that it is not ; 
and afterwards, in private conference, trying to turn 
the claims of their own Church, as compared with that 
of Rome, into ridicule. There is nothing, perhaps, 
very extraordinary in all this, considering the source 
from which it comes. But that a journal of the stand- 
ing of the (ISTew York) Nation should endorse not 
only the "wit" and "humor" of the work, but "its 
logical conclusiveness," is extraordinary. If the Na- 
tion were as well informed on the merits of the con- 
troversy between the two Communions as it is on 
matters of literary criticism, it would not need to be 
told that while one half of the " logic " of the Comedy 
does not rise to the dignity of sophistry, the other half 
draws its conclusions from false premises. 

The merry comedian has undoubtedly a keen sense 
of the ludicrous, real or supposed, in his neighbor's 
position, but is very comfortably unconscious of it in 



VI INTRODUCTORY. 

his own ; and in this he seems to have the " great " 
Roman Communion ^' at his back." As in the case of 
Bottom, the weaver, it is not, as Schlegel says, his 
having on the ass's head, but his being unconscious of 
having it on, that is so provocative of laughter in the 
beholder. " N^one," saith St. Augustine, " doth ordi- 
narily laugh alone ; ordinarily no one. Yet laughter 
sometimes masters men alone and singly when no one 
whatever is with them, if anything ludicrous presents 
itself to their senses or mind."* Such has been the 
case with the writer of this, in his perusal of the Cor)%- 
edy. More than once, or twice, or twenty times, he 
has caught hiniself laughing outright at the Nick-Bot- 
tomism of the comedian ; and he has wished that those 
of his neighbors, of all persuasions, whose investiga- 
tions have been occupied with other matters to the ex- 
clusion of those here in issue, might be ^ut in a posi- 
tion to join in the laugh. Hence the following pages. 

If any of his friends, of the Roman Communion, — 
and he has a good many, — who have relished the 
Qomedy^ should disrelish the Afterpiece^ they will do 
him the justice to acknowledge that the very title of 
the latter presupposes the former, and, but for it, 
would never have come under their cognizance. 

He mil only add that the work makes no preten- 
sion to be dramatic other than in form ; hardly even 
in that. But as the Comedy is rej^orted in the third 
person, it seemed to him that the Reply would be 
more effective in that form. 

Baltimore, April 15, 1869. t 



* Confessions ii. 17. + The delay in publication has been from causes be- 
yond the author's control. The Dedication has been changed, to corre- 
spond ; but the rest remains as it was written. 



THE AFTERPIECE 

TO THE 

COMEDY OF OOT^TOOATIOK 



SCENE I. — An Apartment in Borne. Father Kayeo, seated. 
Enter Father Casula. 

Fafher Kayeo, Well met, Brother Casula ! Take a seat. 
It is a long time since we have seen each other ; longer than 
either of us anticipated when we parted, you for England, 
I for America. 

Father Casula. Long, indeed ! Twenty years, and more. 
And they would have seemed twice twenty, in that land of 
fogs and heretics, but that I was working for The Comjpany^ 
and everything done for it seems light in the doing. 

Kayeo. You have been true to the instincts of the Order 
— for I heard of you from time to time — and have done 
your part to justify its reputation for nice adaptation of 
means to the end, and little nicety in the using of them. 

Casula. It was of necessity, not of choice. I tried work- 
ing db extra^ but it was too slow ; so there was nothing for 
it but to get inside the Establishment, and work my way 
up to a position of influence. 

Kayeo, And you succeeded ? 

Casula. Yes! But it took time. Promotion is slow, 
unless you have a friend at court. But I have no reason to 
complain ; I got up to Archdeacon, and that is as high as 
any of our sort ever get ; Bishops are made from other ma- 
terial. 



8 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Kayeo, And that Parthian arrow of yours was your re- 
turn for your new dignity ? 

Casuld. The Comedy^ you mean ? 

Kayeo. The same. It has had a great run, I am told. 

Casula. Yes ! Among the Dissenters, who, very naturally, 
like to see the Establishment brought down to their level. 
It has had a very fair run among them. 

Kayeo. That is more than can be said of it in America. 

Casula. You surprise me. I thought it was a great suc- 
cess there. Why! there is a "People's Edition, Price 
25 Cents ! " 

Kayeo. Yeiy true ! But it is for our people. If it de- 
pended on the Protestants for its sale, it would be a drug 
on the shelves of the booksellers. 

Casula. And the Churchmen, as they call themselves — 
the thievish knaves ! as though we were not Churchmen !* 
— how is it with them. Do not they read it ? 

Kayeo. O yes ! They read it ; but they do not buy it. 
They have no occasion to do that. I was talking with one 
of them, O'Kaye by name, and he showed me a copy sent 
him by " one of our most dignified Prelates," who, as Fath- 
er Boomerang says, "kept a pile of them on his table, and 
greeted them with his own hand to every Protestant gen- 
tleman of his acquaintance." 

Casula. Father Boomerang ? Who is he ? 

Kayeo. One of the interlocutors of TJie Comedy of Can- 
onization. 

Casula. That must be a new comedy ; it is the first I 
have heard of it. 



* Father Casula forgets Ms own and his friends' quiet assumption of the 
term Catholic ! as though we were not Catholics ! as though the Christian 
Church were not by its very constitution Catholic, a Church for all nations ; 
and not, like the Jewish, a church for one nation only. However, Church- 
man is the more distinctive term, and has the advantage of being found in 
Holy Scripture— rcjo^ airb Tfjg kuKJirjciag^ Acts xii. 1— which Catholic (ex- 
cept as a title, added by a later hand to certain Epistles) is not. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 9 

Kayeo. But not the last you will hear of it, I am think- 
ing. But it is the old comedy that we are upon. As I was 
saying, I was talking with O'Kaye about it, and I asked 
him if he had read it. He said, yes. I asked him what he 
tkought of the argument. Argument! said he; it had not 
occurred to him to look upon it in that light ; he had taken 
it for a squib, and as such he had read it. I assured him it 
was meant for argument, and I asked him, Would he read 
it again, with special reference to its logic, and then give 
me his opinion of it ? He said he would. He was a very 
accommodating man. 

Casula, And did he do so ? 

Kayeo. He did. 

Casula. And what was his opinion of it ? 

Kayeo. Of the argument ? 

Casula. Yes. 

Kayeo. He said he thought it specious rather than solid, 
and the greater part of it not even that. 

Casula. How did he dispose of the first argument ? 

Kayeo. That which you put into the mouth of Arch- 
deacon Theory, that, the Church of England proclaiming 
herself fallible, it necessarily follows that it is the duty of 
her members to doubt everything she teaches ?* 

Casula, Yes. 

Kayeo. He said it proved too much ; for if its allegations 
were well founded, then it was the duty not only of every 



* " The Cliurch of England, in denying her own infallibility, laid all her 
members under the religious obligation of doubting everything she taught. 
Fallibility, properly defined, was not simply liability to err, it was the stat^ 
of error. As infallibility is a state of certainty, which does not admit of 
error, so fallibility is a state of doubt, which does not admit of conviction. 
* * * Consequently, it is one and the same thing to say that we ought 
to deny the Church's infallibility, and that we ought to doubt what the 
Church teaches. Now, the Church of England teaches that there is a God. 
Therefore it is the duty of every Anglican to doubt the existence of a ilod. 
And what is true of this article of belief is true of every other.' '—People's 
Edition, pp. 10, 11. 
1* 



10 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

member of the Church of England, but of every member of 
the Church of Rome, ay, and of every man, woman, and 
child in Christendom, except the Pope, to doubt any and 
everything ; and even of the Pope himself to doubt every- 
thing not pertaining to salvation ; for he was infallible only 
in things pertaining to salvation, and all we, the rest, were 
not infallible at all. 

Casula. But we can take as the faith what the Pope 
teaches to be the faith, and in that way be infallibly certain 
of it. 

Kayeo. So I told him. But that did not help the matter, 
he said ; for how was he to know what the Pope taught ? I 
could tell him, I said. Yery likely; but was / infallible ? And, 
if not, how was he to know infallibly that what I told him was 
what the Pope taught, was what the Pope taught ? There 
was nothing for it, so far as he could see, but for him (and, 
for that matter, since the securing of one's salvation was of 
more consequence than any earthly interest, for every man, 
woman, and child in Christendom) to postpone everything 
to it, and go at once in person to Rome, that they might 
learn from the lips of Infallibility itself what it was neces- 
sary for them to believe and do, in order to make their call- 
ing and election sure. In view of all which, he felt very 
much like exclaiming, with the disciples, WJio^ then^ can le 
saved? With God, indeed, all things were possible; but 
was it so with the Pope ? Could he attend in person to all 
Christendom, suppose all Christendom by miracle — and it 
would be the greatest miracle on record — brought before 
him ? and attend to them at once f for it was a matter that 
admitted of no delay. And if not, ought he not to have 
infallible vice-gerents ? In other words, ought there not to 
be a Pope in every parish, that the people might learn from 
him, with an alsolutely infallible certainty, the way of life ? 
But, to let all that pass, and to come back to his own case, 
which was, after all, of most importance to him ; suppose 
he were to go to Rome, how was he to find the Pope ? and 



COMEDY OF CK)N VOCATION. 11 

how was he to know him when he saw him, seeing he had 
never seen him before ? — He could know him by his resem- 
blance to the portraits ; he had seen them, I said, and they 
were good likenesses. — That might be, but how w^as he to 
'know that they were ? he must have some better clue than 
that to the recognition of his Holiness. — ^Anybody, I said, 
would direct him to the Pope, and when he got to him, the 
Pope would tell him infallibly that he was the Pope. — But 
suppose somebody were to direct him wrong, or he were to 
misunderstand the direction, how was he ever to get to the 
Pope ? and unless he got to the Pope, or the Pope got to him, 
how was the Pope ever to have the opportunity to tell him 
infallibly that he was the Pope ? But let that pass. Sup- 
pose he succeeded, at last in getting to the Pope, and the Pope 
told him infallibly that he was the Pope, and what the faith 
was, and what the things to be done were, — the credenda et 
agenda^ — how was he to know what it was the Pope told him ? 
How was he to know ? Hadn't he ears ? Was he out of his 
senses ? — Ears ! Sinses ! And was it to the sinses I'd be 
pointing him ? Sure, I wouldn't have him thrust to " thim 
deludhers ? " — He had been reading Father Tom^ you see, 
and he was personating him, for the nonce. — Sure, nobody 
in his sinses would thrust to his sinses, at laste in a matter 
of faith, unless he were out of his sinses ; and thin he would 
have no sinses to thrust in. For his part, he would recall 
what he said about a Pope in every parish : that was not 
enough ; every man must be Pope, if he would be infallibly 
certain, certain, that is, with an absolute infallibility, of 
what was necessary to his salvation. And why should not 
every man be Pope ? It was as easy for Omnipotence to 
make all men infallible as to make one man infallible ; and 
there was the same reason for doing the one as for doing 
the other. But here came in a difficulty. Holy Scripture 
made faith necessary to salvation, and affirmed of us as 
Christians that we walk by faith^ not ly sight. Now Infalli- 
bility was sight, as contradistinguished from faith. To 



12 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

make all men infallible, therefore, would be to exclude all 
men from the possibility of salvation. In like manner, to 
make the Pope infallible, would be to exclude the Pope 
from the possibility of salvation. He hoped, therefore, that 
the CEcumenical Council that was to meet next Decembej.' 
would pause before consenting to involve his Holiness in 
such a catastrophe. 

Casula. Very ingeniously put ; but it touches only the 
Pope's infallibility, and it is the infallibility of the Church 
that is in question. 

Kayeo. I suggested the same. But he said it made no 
difference ; the argument applied, mutatis mutandis^ equally 
well to both. And so it does. 

Casula. But it is the theoretical, absolute, infallibility it 
applies to ; and it is the practical infallibility that is the im- 
portant thing, after all. 

Kayeo. So I told him : it was the practical, not the theo- 
retical, infallibility that we claimed. — The practical infalli- 
bility? Ah, indeed! Now, I was talking like a sensible 
man. And, in truth, my friend the jolly archdeacon — it 
was you that he meant, not archdeacon Jolly ; he was think- 
ing, I suppose, of your motto^ on the title-page ; and, 
indeed it does seem rather incongruous ; for what there is 
" merry," in the Comedy, to you in your assumed character, 
it would be hard to say : certainly, your part in the confab- 
ulation is anything but a merry one — my friend the jolly 
archdeacon had shown his sense of dramatic propriety in 
putting the speech about theoretical infallibility into the 
mouth of Archdeacon Theory : for, certainly, no practical 
man would ever rest an argument on so impracticable an 
infallibility. But practical infallibility, the infallibility 
claimed for the Pope by the Count De Maistre t — not that His 
Holiness might not decide wrong, but that his decision must 

* " Give me leave to be merry on a merry subject." 
t See Note A, 1-20. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 13 

not be drawn in question — an infallibility pertaining to every 
civil tribunal of last resort — was quite a different matter ; of 
that infallibility perhaps it might be found that the Anglican 
Church was as fully in possession as the Roman : if not, so 
much the worse for her. 

Gasula. I think we shall have to give up Theory, for 
O'Kaye has pretty effectually demolished him. But what 
did O'Kaye think of Dr. Yiewy ? He must have found him 
a harder customer. 

Kayeo. On the contrary, he was the most easily dis- 
patched of them all. 

Casula. What did he say of his views, and of his way 
of carrying them out ? 

Kayeo. His trying to play fast and loose between High 
and Low,* and thereby making himself a Jack ? He said 
he did not hunt such game, because there was none such to 
hunt. Neither in the Establishment nor any where else was 
there a Yiewy to be found. He was what the mathemati- 
cians would call an impossible quantity ; whereas, Theory 
was only an irrational one. . The very name, he said, showed 
this ; for it was to be found neither in the English Dictionary 
nor in any other dictionary, written or unwritten ; and that, 
for the very good reason that a nomen always presupposed 
a nominandum. 

Gasula. Dean Pliable, I suppose, was got rid of in the 
same way. 

Kayeo. Not at all. So far from Ms being impossible, he 



* " He would preach Low-Church doctrines on the Sundays, denying the 
sacramental view and all its consequences, as the homage of clerical, obedi- 
ence due to the bishop ; but he would teach High-Church doctrines during 
the week, without abating a single tenet, in discharge of the proportionate 
measure of obedience due to the rector. * * * Unhappily, both the 
bishop and the rector died about the same time ; the former being quickly 
replaced by a High-Church bishop, * * * the latter by a Low-Church 
rector, * * * jt now became his duty * * * to invert the order 
and proportion of his teaching, * * * on Sundays he must now be a 
Puseyite, and on week days an Evangelical."— /<j?em, p. 14. 



14 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

was very possible. And, accordingly, he had a good honest 
English name, — good in its place, — as had all the other 
" Yery Reverend Deans," " Venerable Archdeacons," and 
" Reverend Doctors." The ground he stood on, too, — that 
the only proper course for Anglicans was " to profess at the 
same moment every doctrine held within their communion," 
— was solid ground. The words, " and all their contradic- 
tories," with which the sentence was made to end, were an 
addition of the reporter's, and in making it he had admitted 
that the doctrines so held were not contradictory to one 
another ; else, to talk of " the doctrines and their contradic- 
tories," would be to talk nonsense. jSTot only had the 
Dean's speech been added to, his sermon had been tampered 
with; for instead of teaching every doctrine held in the 
Anglican Communion, it taught no doctrine held in it. In 
saying that the Dean's ground — that they should profess at 
the same time every doctrine held within their communion 
— was the true ground, of course, he referred to the great 
schools within it, that were recognized by it, and not to 
here and there an erratic individual at either extreme, such 
as were to be found in all communions, such as no commun- 
ion whose unanimity was any other than a mt^chanical one 
felt itself responsible for. De minimis non curare legem. 
The Church concerned not herself with minnows ; she had 
other fish to fry. Setting the minnows aside — leaving them 
to disport themselves in their little pools and imagine them- 
selves big fishes — the schools were in substantial agreement 
except on the negative side of their teaching. And here 
the remark of Pascal * was in point, that " the generality ot 
men were in the right in their afi&rmations and in the wrong 
in their negations." Of course, this remark, like most 
general remarks, needed qualifying ; negations might be put 
in an afiarmative form, and afi&rmations in a negative form : 
but the meaning of Pascal was plain ; and, taken as he 

* J'ai troiive que la phipart des hommes ont raison en ce qii' ils avancent, 
inais non pas en ce qu' ils merit.— Quoted from memory. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 15 

meant it to be taken, the remark was particularly applicable 
to the subject in hand. To apply it, for instance, to the 
" five points " of the Dean's sermon, " Baptism," " the Lord's 
Supper," '' the Visible Church," " the Roman Church," and 
"■ Confession and Absolution." High and Low agreed that 
Baptism was the starting-point in the training of a child for 
heaven ; * that the one object of that training was that the 
child might lead the rest of his life according to that begin- 
ning; that the nature and the oUigation of it were laid 
down in the Exhortation to the Godfathers and Godmothers ; 
that the pattern of it was the Catechism ; that if he were 
trained to the believing and the doing of all that was there- 
in contained and continued in that believing and that doing, 
walking in the same all the days of his life, his everlasting 
salvation was assured ; that if, on the other hand, he were 
left to himself, and, so, grew up, as in that case he would 
grow up, not into Christ but unto the devil, that was from 
no failure on the part of God, whose " promises " " made to 
them in that sacrament " were all Yea, and Amen, in Christ 
Jesus, and were most surely kept and performed, but was 
the fault, first of the parents and sponsors, and then of him- 
self; but if, having grown up into Christ in childhood and 
youth, he fell away in after life, that was his own fault 
alone and he alone must bear it; in either case, he 
must be converted, or be shut out of the kingdom of heaven. 
Surely, here was substantial practical agreement. If what 
went beyond this, on either side, was excepted to by any of 
the other side, it was because it seemed to them inconsistent 
with what both sides were agreed on. The remedy for this 
was not the calling of such men heretics, for heretics they 
were not. l^o man was a heretic who honestly received the 
Church's teaching, however he might, on the one hand, fail 
to enter into its full significance, or, on the other hand, give 
it a significance that the language did not necessarily in- 

* See Note B. 



16 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

volve. No two men thought exactly alike ; it was not 
possible, or, -in his opinion, even desirable, that they should : 
a mechanical unanimity was worthless. The true remedy 
was a brotherly interchange of views, the result of which 
would be, in nine cases out of ten, a conviction on the part 
of both that they were substantially agreed, after all. 

What had been said in regard to Baptism might be said, 
mutatis mutandis^ in regard to the Lord's Supper. High 
and Low agreed that the consecrated bread and wine were 
sacramentally the body and blood of the Lord, but that 
this did not import any physical change in the elements ; 
the natural substance of the bread and wine remained after 
consecration as before ; that the body and blood of the 
Lord were given to the soul, in that sacrament, to feed on ; 
that the instrument or spiritual organ, so to say, by which 
it fed on them was faith ; that they who came to the sacra- 
ment with that faith, ate and drank the body and blood of 
the Lord to their soul's health, but that they who came 
w^ithout that faith, ate and drank their own condemnation. 
As to whether there was an objective presence of the spirit- 
ual nourishment in the consecrated bread and and wine, 
that was a question of words rather than of things ; neither 
the spiritual nor the physical nourishment was received and 
appropriated unless there were present the power, in the 
one case spiritual, in the other physical, of reception and 
appropriation. 

In regard to the eucharistic sacrifice, High and Low 
would alike agree to the words of S. Chrysostom : " There 
is but one sacrifice ; we do not offer another sacrifice, but 
continually the same : or rather we make a memorial of the 
sacrifice ;" * and of S. Augustine : " Christians celebrate the 
memorial of the same fully finished sacrifice, by sacred ob- 
lation, and participation of Christ's Body and Blood ;" t 

* fjLa/J.ov 6e avajivrjoiv kpya^ofieOa dvaiag — Homil. xvii. in Heb. 

t Unde jam Christiani peracti ejusdem sacrificii memoriam celebrant, 
sacrosancta oblatione, et participatione Corporis et Sanguinis Christi.— 
Contra Faust. ^ Lib. xx. C. 18. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 17 

and of Ridley : *' The whole substance of our sacrifice, 
which is frequented of the Church in the Lord's Supper, 
consisteth in prayers, praise, and giving of thanks, and in 
remembering and showing forth of that sacrifice upon the 
altar of the cross ; that the same might continually be had 
in reverence by mystery, which, once only and no more, was 
offered as the price of our redemption ;"* " a representa- 
tion," not a repetition, " of that bloody sacrifice ;"t but 
the Tridentine doctrine of the MassJ: they abhorred — the 
word was not too strong — as, to use the words of the same 
Ridley, "a new blasphemous kind of sacrifice, to satisfy 
and pay the price of sins, both of the dead and of the 
quick, to the great and intolerable contumely of Christ our 
Saviour, His death and passion ; which was, and is the 
only sufi&cient and everlasting, available sacrifice, satisfac- 
tory for all the elect of God, from Adam the firfet, to the 
last that shall be born to the end of the World. "§ 

In the same sense in which they admitted a sacrifice, they 
admitted an altar and a priest, for the three went together. 
They had no doubt that S. Paul was a priest, for he himself 
expressly declared that the grace of Grod was given to him 
to that very end, that he should be " the minister (/lecrovpybv) 
of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest 
(lepovpyoiuvTa) the gospel of God, that the offering up 
{TTpoG(popa) of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanc- 
tified by the Holy Ghost ;" 1 but they had just as little 
doubt that he was neither a Jewish nor a Tridentine priest, 
for he offered no victim on the altar ; the only victim, under 
he gospel, had been offered on the Cross, once for all. 



* Disputations at Oxford, Works, Parker Society, p. 211. t Ibid.,p, 250. 

X Si quis dixerit missse sacrificium tantiim esse laudis et gratiarum ac- 
tionis, aiit niidam commemorationem sacrificii in crace peracti, non pro- 
pitiatorium, vel soli prodesse sumenti, neque pro vivis et defunctis, pro pec- 
catis, poeDis, satisfactionibus, etaliis necessitatibiis offerri debere; anath- 
ema sit.— Sess. xxii., Can. 3. 

§ A Piteous Lamentatim, Works, p. 52. II Rom. xv. 16. 



18 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

What, then, did he offer ? for a priest implies an offering, 
and that offering a sacrifice ; he had himself told us in the 
passage just cited : he offered his Gentile converts, '' a liv- 
ing sacrifice, (Ovalav ^oaav^) holy, acceptable unto God," a 
" reasonable service (XoyucTjv larpeiav) ;"* and, as included 
and involved in it, their prayers, their alms, their oblations 
of bread and wine, as well as of other " gifts and crea- 
tures " of God ; for the bread and wine were the oblation 
of the people, consecrated by the priest and by him offered 
to Almighty God. In truth, every Christian was a priest, in 
the same sense, though not to the same extent, as w^ere the 
*' ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of 
God;" just as every Jew was a priest, in the same, sense, 
though not to the same extent, as were " Aaron and his 
Sons."t Under both dispensations the offerings of the peo- 
ple were of the same kind with those of the priest, only the 
private individual offered for himself only (the father of a 
family for his household), whereas the priest offered for the 
congregation, consecrating their sacrifice — in the one case 
(in part) of victims, in the other of prayer and praise and 
of the " gifts and creatures " of bread and wine — und pre- 
senting it to Almighty God. 

What he had thus laid down was held alike by High and 
Low ; if some disliked the use of the words priest, altar, 
sacrifice, it was because those words were so generally used 
in a Tridentine sense ;| but in that sense neither High nor 
Low received them. Here, then, as in the other sacrament, 
there was substantial practical agreement. 

So, again, as to " the Visible Church, what it is, and who 
belongs to it ? " On this latter point there was no differ- 
ence whatever. High and Low agreed that all baptized 
persons not excommunicate, and none but such, belonged to 
it. High and Low were equally agreed, too, as to what it 
was, as it came from the hands of its Founder and His 

* Rom. xii. 1. 

t Exod. xix. 5, 6 ; 1 Pet. ii. 9 ; Lev. i. 2, 5, 10, 11. % See Note B. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 19 

Apostles ; that it was- the Congregation of the Baptized, 
with a Ministry constituted in Three Orders, Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons ; that this ministry had, in the good 
Providence of God, been preserved in the Anglican, as well 
well as in the Greek, and in the Roman Communion ; and 
that it would be wrong for them to change it ; hence they 
agreed in requiring of Congregational, Presbyterian and 
Methodist Ministers, seeking admission to it, first a proba- 
tionary candidature, then Ordination, first to the Diaconate, 
after that to the Priesthood. Here, again, as before, they 
were in practical agreement. 

As to the " Roman Chm'ch," High and Low agreed in ad- 
mitting her Churchhood — the word was wanted — and in re- 
jecting her corruptions ; they would have no communion 
with her in them ; when she would cast them away and re- 
turn to herself, they would gladly hold out to her the right 
hand of fellowship. 

The last of the ^Ye points was " Confession and Absolu- 
tion." So far from " most of them probably having never 
heard of either," they were in the habit, High and Low, 
whenever they met together for worship according to " The 
Order of Daily Morning (or Evening) Prayer," of joining in 
the one and, except in the absence of the priest, receiving 
the other; but they abhorred that delusion of the devil 
which, contrary to our Blessed Lord's own words, " Where 
two or three are met together in my name there am I in the 
midst of them," saw in the priest the vicar of an absent in- 
stead of the minister and mouth-piece of a present God, con- 
veying, as such mouth-piece^ and only as such, to those who with 
hearty repentance and true faith had made their confession, 
and only to those, " the absolution and remission of their 
sins ;" the confession was not to the priest but to Almighty 
God, and Almighty God — not the priest, except as his 
mouth-piece, — pronounced them absolved; — as to private 
confession, they admitted it in the exceptional case where a 
communicant, follomng the course pointed out by S. Paul, 



20 AFTERBIECE TO THE 

" Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that 
bread" — the Apostle called it bread after consecration — 
" and drink of that cup,"* — the Apostle taught communion 
in both kinds — was unable " by this means " to " quiet his 
own conscience," but required " further comfort or coun- 
sel;" but they rejected it as a rule, not merely because of 
the immoralities sometimes attendant on it, but because, fol- 
lowed as a habit, it weakened the feeling of direct, immedi- 
ate accountability to God, and led him who followed it to 
seek to shoulder his individual, personal responsibility upon 
his spiritual director, contrary to those words of S. Paul to 
the Romans, *' So then every one of us shall give account of 
himself to God,"t — and those other words of his to the Gal- 
atian Christians, " But let every man prove his own work, 
and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not 
in another. For every man shall bear his own burden."! 

He had, thus, taken up in detail every one of the five 
points of the merry Archdeacon's Beport of the Dean's ser- 
mon, and had shown upon every one of them instead of the 
alleged triplicity a substantial practical unanimity : and 
he thought the merry Archdeacon himself would have to 
admit as much. 

Casula. Not quite ; if I had to place him among my dra- 
matis personm^ I should call him Dean Plausible : but I doubt 
if his plausibility would stand the searching analysis of 
Dean Critical. 

Kayeo. He himself had no such doubt. Many of the 
Dean's observations would be solid, he said, if they were 
only true ; as it was, they had not even the solidity of a 
stereoscopic image, which at least looked solid. His ques- 
tion, " Could any of his reverend friends undertake to in- 
form him what t^jas the authority of the Church of England," 
was easily answered. It was an authority as different from 
that of the Church of Rome as Anglo-Saxon modes of 

* 1 Cor. xi. 28. t Rom. xiv. 12. X Gal. vi. 4, 5. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 2\ 

thought were different from Roraanic, — as the Common 
Law, which was the exponent of the one, was different 
from the Code, which was the exponent of the other ; an 
authority over free hearts and minds — free with " the glo- 
rious liberty of the children of God " — and not over " her- 
editary bondmen ;" an authority of rule, not of caprice ; a 
legislative, a judicial, an executive authority; each having 
its distinct and separate depositary, Convocation, the Ec- 
clesiastical Court, the Ordinary ; each supreme in its own 
sphere, in all cases purely ecclesiastical. 

Casula. He must have been thinking of the arrange- 
ments in the United States with which he is evidently more 
familiar than with those in England. He forgets that the 
Privy Council has jurisdiction in causes ecclesiastical, and 
that, too, on points not merely of discipline but of doc- 
trine. 

Kayeo. I called his attention to it. He said the civil 
courts, of which the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coun- 
cil was the highest, of course had jurisdiction in matters 
both of discipline and of doctrine so far as those matters 
bore on the temporalities of the Church ; it was so in all 
countries, even in the United States, where the courts of the 
several States had the same jurisdiction, and exercised it, 
as more than one Roman Bishop could testify ; if in any in- 
stance the Judicial Committee went beyond that, it only 
showed that to that extent the Church of England was en- 
slaved to the State — a condition most undesirable, but in 
which she had the Church of France, of Italy, of Austria, 
to keep her company. 

Casula. All that concerns the Church's authority as a 
Ruler ; but how about her authority as a Teacher ? What 
did he say to that remark of the Dean's about the Articles, 
that " while they said, ' the Church Jiath authority,' they 
at the same time enjoined the clergy not to believe a single 
w^ord she taught them, unless they found their own inter- 
pretation of the Scriptures to agree with hers ! " ? 



22 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Kayeo. He said he did not wonder that the merry Arch- 
deacon had put a note of admiration at the end of the 
remark, for certainly it was the silliest remark that any 
Critical or other Dean ever made. He would read me the 
Article referred to {Art. XX.) first in English and then in 
Latin, merely remarking that the two were of equal author- 
ity, the Latin being the original, and the English the 
Church's authoritative translation of it. 

^' The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, 
and authority in controversies of faith ; and yet it is not 
lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to 
God's word ^\Titten, neither may it so expound one place of 
Scripture that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, al- 
though the Church be a witness and keeper of Holy Writ ; 
yet as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so 
besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be be- 
lieved for necessity of salvation."* 

Two things entirely distinct in their nature were here at- 
tributed to the Church, — the " power to decree rites and cer- 
emonies," which was a legislative power, — and " authority 
in controversies of faith," which was a judicial power ; the 
limit to the one power was, that it (the Church) ougJit not 
(debet) to decree any rite or ceremony against (adversus) 
Holy Writ ; to the other power, that it ought not to enforce 
any doctrine, as of faith, besides, i. e., beyond (prceter) the 
same Holy Writ. Now, on the first of these points, was 
there any difference between us? Would I say that the 
Church ought to decree any ceremony contrary to God's word 
written ? 

Certainly not, I said; but who was to judge whether a 



* Habet Ilcclesia ritus sive cseremonias statuendi jus, et in fidei contro- 
versiis authoritatem ; quamvis Ecclesiae non licet quicquam instituere, 
quod verbo Dei scripto adversetur ; nee unum scripturae locum sic expon- 
ere potest, ut alteri contradicat. Quare licet Ecclesia sit divinorum libro- 
mm testis et conservatrix, attamen ut adversus eos nihil decernere, ita 
praeter illos nihil credendum de necessitate salutis debet obtrudere. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 23 

particular ceremony that might chance to be brought in 
question was, or was not, contrary to the written word ? 

The Church, he said, was to judge, of course^ and not 
the individual ; otherwise, there could be no Church. In 
like manner, the Church was to determine of this, that, or 
the other doctrine whether it was or was not 'beyond Holy 
Writ ; there was not a syllable in the Article, irom begin- 
ning to end, about the clergy not being required to believe 
a single word she taught them, unless they found it for 
themselves in Holy Scripture ; she was not treating of their 
prerogatives and duties, but of her own ; she was laying 
down the rule by which she ougM to be guided in determin- 
ing what was of the faith and what was not. 

But suppose, I said, she did not do what she ought? 
where was the remedy ? To me it seemed absurd to say 
that there was a limit to the Church's prerogative, and, in 
the same breath, to make her the judge of what that limit 
was, and when, in each particular case, it was reached. 

He saw no absurdity in it, he said ; if there was any, it 
was one in which the late Chief Justice of the United 
States — a dutiful son of the Roman Church — and his Asso- 
ciates on the Bench, in common with all judges of Anglo- 
Saxon law, everywhere, were very often involved. The 
Courts of England and the United States were accustomed 
to decide, first (if the question were raised) their own juris- 
diction, and (that being afl^^med) then, the validity of the 
law whose bindingness was in question — whether it was in 
accordance with the Constitution ; and in doing all this, 
they never dreamed they were doing what was absurd. They 
saw no absurdity in claiming judicial authority — and that 
was what the Chm-ch of England, in her Twentieth Article, 
claimed in controversies of faith — and disclaiming, except 
in the sense of the Count De Maistre already referred to, 
judicial infallibility ; least of all, the absurdity of saying 
virtually, in regard to the law, what the Dean represented 
the Church of England as saying in regard to the gospel. 



24 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

" I cannot teach you, nevertheless obey," or, " I can teach 
you, nevertheless do not obey." I^either did they see any 
absurdity in admitting a limit to their authority as inter- 
preters and expounders of the law, and yet claiming to de- 
termine for themselves what that limit was. Who else 
should determine it ? As to the " rebuke of the Count De 
Maistre," of which the Dean " would remind the House," 
and " than which nothing, he conceived, was ever more con- 
spicuously merited," to wit, that " In the very same moment, 
with the very same pen, with the same ink, and upon the 
same paper, the Church of England declares a dogma, and 
declares she has no right to declare it,"* the " rebuke " might 
be "caustic," and it certainly was "ingenious;" he would 
be the last to detract from its merits on that score ; for in- 
mntive ingenuity, he knew of nothing to compare with it in 
the whole range of fiction ; Munchausen came nearest : 

P?vxu7nus huic, longo sed proxamus intervaUo. 

Had the Count but taken lessons in the principles of Anglo- 
Saxon jurisprudence from his co-religionist, the Chief Jus- 
tice before-mentioned, he would have sought anywhere else 
than in the Twentieth Article of the Church of England for 
his palmary instance of " human inconsistency." 

In taking leave of the Dean, whom he thought he had 
already pretty effectually disposed of, so far as his interpre- 
tations of the Articles were concerned, he wished to call my 
attention to two or three gross misrep7'esentations of them. 
Thus, " one of them," we were told by the veracious Dean, 
not only enjoined all Anglicans not to obey " the Church's au- 
thority," but even instructed them how to evade obedience 
by pleading " their own interpretation of the Bible," when 
he knew that there was not a syllable about " their own in- 
terpretation," or any private or individual interpretation, in 
the whole Thirty-nine ; but that on the contrary, in every 
one of them 1)7/ imjMcation, and in at least half a dozen of 

*See Note A, 83. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 25 

them expressly^ the Church put forth her own interpretation 
to the exclusion of any and all opposing private interpreta- 
tions. Again, in the Twenty-first Article where the Church 
said of General Councils that " they may err, and sometimes 
have erred," the critical (!) Dean represenied her as saying 
that they were " incurably addicted to erring ;" and that, 
too, though he knew that she held as a matter of fact that 
the first six General Councils had not erred in matters of 
faith, and that even Calvin himself held the same of at least 
the first four."^ Once more ; the Dean had not scrupled to 
aflS^rm that "the preface" — so he termed it — "to the Arti- 
cles" — meaning thereby His Majesty's Declaration, prefixed 
thereto — said that " no man should put Ms own sense or 
comment upon their meaning." Now there was nothing at 
all, in the passage here pretended to be quoted, about the 
articles in general, as represented by the Dean ; its language 
was confined to one particular article — the only one, at that 
time, whose meaning was in dispute. The words were, " and 
shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning 
of the Article," viz., the Seventeenth — Of Predestination and 
Election — " but shall take it in the literal and grammatical 
sense." But even this the Church was not responsible for ; 
for she had never given it her sanction. The Declaration 
was put forth, not with the assent of Convection, but "with 
the advice of so many of our Bishops as might conveniently 
be called together." 

So much for the Very Reverend confabulator's representa- 
tions. After three such specimens of criticism^ he might 
venture, perhaps, to put forward as a pious opinion, which 
the Pope was welcome, if he saw fit, to make into an article 

* Sic priscas illas synodos, nt Nicaenam, Constantinopolitanam, Ephesi- 
nain primam, Chalcedonensem, ac similes, quae confatandis erroribus 
habitse sunt, lib enter amplectimur, reveremurque ut sacrosanctas, quan- 
tum attinet ad fldei dogmata, nihil enim continent quam puram et nativam 
Scripturse interpretationem quam sancti patres, spirituali prudentia, ad 
frangendos religionis hostes, qui tunc emerserant, accommodarunt.— /?i,s^. 
IV. ix. 8. 

2 



26 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

of faith, that the Dean, or somebody else, was *^ incurably 
addicted " to lying. — I give you his very words ; as they 
have not yet been made an article of faith, if you don^t like 
them it is open to you to say so. 

Gasula, And will be, for some time : so I'll not interrupt 
the course of your narrative ; especially as we are coming 
upon that pink and paragon of parsons the Eev. Lavender 
Kidds, and I am curious to learn what O'Kaye said of him. 

Kayeo. He said he was a rara avis — a bird of rare 'plum- 
age. He knew of one specimen — his memory went back to 
a past generation — Elder Shampoodle, who used to have 
his hair curled and frizzled by a barber, and then drive to 
meeting in a coach and two, bareheaded, that his locks 
might not get out of curl ! He belonged to one of the 
largest denominations in the land, but sat very loosely upon 
it ; he was, that was to say, a fast and a loose man, and he 
played fast and loose with the hearts of his hearers — of the 
better half of them. If there was a method in his madness, 
it was one that the Apostle would have classed among raq 
fieOodeiag rov Aiaj^oTiov.^ Of course, his " kids " were fault- 
less, though their perfume might not have been so pro- 
nounced as that of one of the monks of Port Royal, whose 
" odor of sanctity," if he rightly remembered, was distinctly 
perceptible hgif a mile off. His face might have been none 
the worse if, instead of rasping his time, his temper, and 
his skin, every morning, he had been content to let nature 
have her way ; but Apostolic men did not always now-a- 
days wear Apostolic beards. Even the "Prince of the 
Apostles," if the traditionary representations of him were 
to be trusted, had in this respect a most " corrupt follow- 
ing ;" could he in prophetic vision have seen himself in the 
persons of his alleged successors of the present day " all 
shaven and shorn," he would have had serious doubts of his 
personal identity. 

* Eph. vi. 2. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 27 

But enough of the Shampoodles and the Kiddses; one 
popinjay did not make a school, any more than one swallow 
made a summer. Such extreme specimens were extremely 
rare. Even of those whose tendency was that way, the 
number was small; nineteen-twentieths of the professed 
ministers of Christ within the Establishment and outside of 
it, within the Anglican Communion in the United States 
and outside of that Communion, were earnest men ; and 
even with the other twentieth included, Kidds, Shampoo- 
die, and all, they had nothing to fear from a comparison 
with an equal number of the clergy of the Koman Com- 
munion in the most enlightened parts of Europe, to say 
nothing of the countries of Central and South America. 

Oasula. All which is as much as to say that there are 
black shepherds, as well as black sheep, in every flock — 
which is, no doubt, true enough. But what did he say of 
Kidds's theology ? 

Kayeo. Of his watchword, the " Bible, the whole Bible, 
and nothing but the Bible ? " 

Casula. Yes, and of Dean Blunt's commentary upon it — 
" m^/ interpretation of the Bible, and not yours," — what is 
commonly called Private Judgment ? 

Kayeo. He said it was truth, but not the whole truth ; 
or rather, it was an exaggeration of a part of the truth, to 
the prejudice of another and equally important part. If 
Mr. Kidds went to one extreme. Dean Blunt went to anoth- 
er. The Dean's argument, — that " Bible Christianity was, of 
all fallacies the most transparent ; the fallacy consisting in 
this, that no professedly Bible Christian ever really took the 
Bible for his authority ; what he always took was his own 
interpretation of the Bible, that was, himself;'''' and that 
therefore " the Bible and self were synonymous terms in the 
mouth of the Bible Christian," — was itself a transparent fal- 
lacy — so transparent that the wonder was that the Dean 
himself did not see through it. For, what was a man's self? 
Was it his intellect ? Was it his will ? Was it his emo- 



28 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

tional nature ? Was it not, rather, all three ? And was not 
a man, therefore, often said to be at war with himself, be- 
cause his judgment led him one way, and his feelings 
another ? Or, if any one of the three might be more prop- 
erly termed self than another, was it not the will rather than 
either of the other two ? And did ever anybody hear of a 
man's putting a particular interpretation on a passage of 
Holy Writ because he willed to put that interpretation upon 
it ? — in other words, of his thinking a passage had this or 
that meaning, because he willed to think it had ? A man 
could no more haye a particular opinion by willing to have 
it than he could, " by taking thought, add one cubit to his 
stature." No doubt, a man's wishes, which were a very dif- 
ferent thing from his will, sometimes influenced his convic- 
tions, — sometimes, but not always, or even generally ; for in 
the first place, there were those — he had met with not a few 
of them in the course of his experience as a parish priest — 
whose convictions of the meaning of some passage of Holy 
Scripture ran counter to their wishes; and he had more 
than once been asked by such if the meaning that thus 
seemed to force itself upon them was really the meaning ; 
and he had noticed — he could not help noticing — the shade 
of disappointment that flitted across their brow when he 
told them that it was, — that the language could by no pos- 
sibility admit of any other. These were true Bible Chris- 
tians ; once satisfied of what the Bible decided on any 
point, they bowed to its decision as to that of a tribunal 
from which there was no appeal. So far, then, was the Bible 
in their case, from being self, it was an Absolute Authority 
over self. — Again ; there was a class who claimed to be Bible 
Christians, but who rejected a part of what was commonly 
received as the Bible, the part thus rejected containing, even 
according to their own interpretation of it, doctrines which 
they did not and could not receive. Neither in their case, 
any more than in the other, was the Bible self, though with 
some of them, self might be the Bible. There was yet 



. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 29 

another class of Bible Christians, larger than either of the 
other — in fact, embracing the great majority of all who 
went by the name ; and to this class Mr. Kidds himself be- 
longed. Yet, neither with this class, any more than with 
the other two, were the Bible and self synonymous terms. 
The interpretation they put upon Holy Scripture was not 
any individual, private interpretation of their own, but the 
traditional interpretation in which they had been trained. 
So far were their private fancies, feelings, wishes, from hav- 
ing fashioned that interpretation, they had themselves been 
fashioned upon it ; and it was from the conformity thence 
resulting that the Dean had so superficially and illogically 
argued that self had originated the interpretation. The 
conclusion, like those of most of the Very Reverend Deans, 
Venerable Archdeacons, and Reverend Doctors and Proctors, 
was altogether too big for the premises. 

No doubt Mr. Kidds was sincere in saying that " as long 
as they had the "Word they wanted nothing else ; " but he 
had something else, nevertheless, and he could not have got 
along without it, or something in its place. The influences 
under which he had grown up from infancy were none the 
less real for their being so subtle that he was unconscious 
of them ; they surrounded him like the atmosphere, and, 
like it, they pressed upon him, without his feeling it, with 
the weight of several tons. It was necessarily so. No man 
could grow up uninfluenced by his religious smTOundings. 
Men came to the interpretation of the Bible with an inherited 
tradition, — a tradition which they found it extremely hard 
to shake themselves entirely free from in after life, even 
when convinced that it was an erroneous one. Some came 
with the tradition of Luther ; some with that of Calvin, or 
that of Zuingle ; some with the more modern one of Pope 
Pius ly., supplemented on one point, and, perhaps, soon to 
be supplemented on another, by that of Pius IX. ; some with 
that of Wesley. Other some, Greek and Anglican, were 
guided by an older tradition — a written tradition, not an 



30 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

oral — going back, inform to the First Council of Constan- 
tinople, in substance to the Apostles' times — that pattern or 
model of sound words — that deposit, committed by S. Paul 
to the first Bishop of Ephesus, and by him, according to his 
instructions, handed on to his successors, as, for substance, 
by the other Bishops of the Apostolic Age to theirs, down 
to the Council of Mce, and thence on to that of Constanti- 
nople — the Creed of Christendom. 

Gasula. His Church has added to that Creed. 
Kayeo. Yes, in the matter of the Procession of the Holy 
Ghost, as I reminded him. It was true, he said ; but the 
addition, in its Anglican interpretation, was objected to 
by the Greeks, not as erroneous, but as unauthorized ; and 
in this he agreed with them, as did also Pope Leo HI.* 

Gasula. What did he mean by representing the traditions 
embodied in the Creed of Pope Pius as more modern than 
those of Calvin and Luther ? He must have known that 
they were, even then, of long standing. 

Kayeo. It was as authoritative traditions, I suppose, that 
he termed them more modern; and, as such, they certainly 
are. 

Gasula. He derives the Creed from tradition — a written 
tradition, indeed, but handed down nevertheless, outside of 
the Bible, though alongside of it; whereas the Eighth 
Article derives it from the Bible. 

Kayeo. That, he said, was a mistake ; the Article said 
nothing about the source or the derivation of the Creed, 
but only that it might be " proved," as, in every part and 
parcel, most undoubtedly it might, " by most certain war- 
rants of Holy Scripture," and that therefore it ''ought 
thoroughly {omnino) to be received and believed." But it 
did not follow that Holy Scripture was the only sufficient 
"warrant" for receiving and believing it. The works of 
creation were the heathen's sufficient warrant for receiving 
and believing in One God, Almighty, Maker of Heaven aiad 

* See infra, p. 48. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 31 

Earth, and of All Things Visible and Invisible ; for the 
invisible things of Him from the creation of the world were 
clearly seen, being understood by the things that were 
made, even His eternal power and Godhead ; so that they 
were without excuse ^ for not receiving thus much of the 
Creed notwithstanding they had no Bible to prove it by. 
The teaching of its mother or its godmother was the child's 
sufficient warrant for receiving it till he came to that age 
when by reason of use his senses were exercised to discern 
both good and evil.t The Church's teaching was her child- 
ren's sufficient warrant for receiving it — he meant her 
grown-up children, her men and women — when, in the 
Providence of God, — and this was the case with the majority 
of them, — the Bible was inaccessible to them. For the 
Bible was given, not to supplant the Church in her office of 
Teacher, but to be a check, or counter-roll (control) upon 
her teaching. Hence the Apostles, who were certainly not 
less infallible than the Pope or the Eoman Church, and 
even our Blessed Lord, who was Infallibility itsdf, con- 
stantly appealed to it. 

S. Luke had set before us first (in his Gospel) the Master 
giving the example, and then (in the Acts) his Apostles 
following it: " He came to Nazareth, where he had been 
brought up ; and as Ms custom was^ he went into the syna- 
gogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read." J 
And, after reading. He proceeded to comment upon what he 
had read. 

S. Paul, following the example thus set him, " came to 
Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews : " and, 
" as Ms manner was^ went in unto them, and three Sabbath 
days reasoned with them out of the Seriptures,''^^ but could 
make little impression on them. Going thence to Berea, he 
there again " went into the synagogue of the Jews," and 
preached '' the word of God." " These were more noble 
than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word 

* Rom. i. 20. t Heb. v. 14. $ S. Luke iv. 16. § Acts xvii. 1, 2, 



32 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures 
daily whether those things were so." * 

The '^ Prince of the Apostles," too, followed the same 
example, appealing to Scripture in his discourse on the day 
of Pentecost ; and in his Epistle to " them that had obtained 
like precious faith," he assured all Christians that they had 
a " more sure word of prophecy ; wJiereunto they did well to 
take heed^ as unto a light shining in a dark place ; " + and in 
his other Epistle he gaye the command, " If any man speak, 
let him speak as the oracles of God," \ — in which he but 
echoed the teaching of the older dispensation, " To the Law, 
and to the testimony ; if they speak not according to this 
word, it is because there is no light in them." § 

To be sure, he warned those he was writing to, that in 
the Epistles of S. Paul were " some things hard to be under- 
stood, which they that were unlearned and unstable wrested, 
as they did also the other scriptures, unto their own destruc- 
tion ; " but this was only saying that the best things were 
liable to abuse — ^which who denied ? — ^but that was no 
argument against their use. Besides, had he not declared 
to them, in the same breath, that one at least of those 
Epistles was wiitten to them ? and what was it written to 
them for, if they were not to read it, or to hear it read ? 

The fact was that nearly all the Epistles were addressed 
to some one or more Churches — not merely, or chiefly, to 
the clergy, but to the laity, the Christian men and women, 
high and low, rich and poor, one with another : 

" Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ " — " To all that be in 
Kome, beloved of God, called to be saints" — '' Unto the 
church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sancti- 
fied in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in 
every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, 
both theirs and ours " — " Unto the church of God which is 
at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia " — 
" Unto the churches of Galatia "— " To the saints which are 

* Acts xYii. 10, 11. t2Pet. i. 19. $ 1 Pet. iv. 11. § Isa. viu. 20. 



COMEI>Y OF CONVOCATION. 33 

at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus " — " To all 
the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the 
bishops and deacons " — " To the saints and faithful breth- 
ren in Christ which are at Colosse " — " Unto the Church of 
the Thessalonians which is in God the Father, and in the 
Lord Jesus Christ:" — "James, a servant of God and of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered 
abroad, greeting:" — "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to 
the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappa- 
docia, Asia, and Bithynia, Elect according to the fore- 
knowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the 
Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the_^blood of Jesus 
Christ." 

In all but three of these the salutatipn was, expressly, and 
in those three, by im|)lication, not to the corporate body of 
the Church, but to the individual members. What right^ 
then, had the Church, or any portion of it, in its corporate 
capacity, to keep back any part of the precious deposit 
with which it had been put in trust — the inspired written 
tradition — from those to whom it was addressed ? Was it 
not felony in a post-office clerk, the servant of an earthly 
monarch, to keep back a letter ? and was it any less than 
felony in a servant — head, as he claimed of the other 
servants — not clerk, but Postmaster General — of the King 
of kings ? Did not the Apostle expect as a matter of course 
that the Epistle to the Komans would be read among the 
Eomans, the Epistles to the Corinthians among the Corin- 
thians, the Epistle to the Ephesians among the Ephesians, 
&c., and was it not his intention that those epistles, as also 
all the others, should be read beyond their several immediate 
spheres? and did he not, therefore, taking the first for 
granted, in writing to the Colossian Christians, make pro- 
vision for the second by charging them,* " When this epistle 
is read among you, cause that it be read also in the Church 
of the Laodiceans ; and that ye likewise read the epistle 

* Col. iv. 16. 
2* 



34 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

from Laodicea " ? And was not one of Ms epistles, in one 
of the passages alre^ady cited, expressly addressed not merely 
to the Corinthian Christians but to "a^Z tliat in every place call 
upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord f " Nay, did not the 
Apostle, in the very first epistle he ever wrote, as if in pro- 
phetic anticipation of what had since come to pass, say to 
the Thessalonian Christians, "I charge you {bpiu^o^l adjure 
you,) by the Lord that this epistle be read to all the breth- 
ren ? "* And if the Epistles, much more the Gospels, and 
the Acts of the Apostles, which were less " hard to be un- 
derstood." And as to the Old Testament, did not the Apos- 
tle say to the Komans, in express reference to it, " Whatso- 
ever things were written aforetime were written for our 
learning, that we through patience and comfort of the 
scriptures might have hope ? "t And did he not commend 
S. Timothy in that " from a child he had known the holy 
scriptures which were able to make him wise unto salvation 
through faith which is in Christ Jesus ? "J Really, it was 
to him simply astounding that a Church that claimed to be 
the mother and mistress of all Churches, should thus go in 
the very teeth of the teaching of an apostle whom she claim- 
ed as one of her founders. 

Casula. There is no occasion for his astoundment. The 
Church is but discharging her function of '' steward of the 
manifold grace of God ;" giving milk to babes, and reserv- 
ing '' strong meat " for " them that are of full age." 

Kayeo, I suggested as much, but he said, That did not 
meet the question fairly and squarely. What he objected 
to in the Church of Rome was not that she gave milk to 
babes but that it was not the " milk of the word " that she 
gave to them — at any rate, not the ''sincere^ milk of the 
word," and that, in consequence, they did not " grow there- 
by,"! but were kept in perpetual minority, and that minor- 

* 1 Thes. v. 27. t Rom. xv. 4. :}: 2 Tim. iii. 15. 

§ Sine cera, without wax ; originally applied to pure honey, and after- 
wards to any unadulterated substance. || 1 Pet. ii. 2. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 35 

ity made the pretext for the perpetual withholding of strong 
meat from them. That was not the stewardship of the 
Apostle. S. Luke had informed us of the object with which 
his gospel and, by parity of reasoning, the other gospels, 
had been written, to wit, that Theophilus, and, in him, all 
theopJiili — friends of God — might know the certainty of 
those things wherein they had been catechized {Karjjxv^^^)' 
The Bible was for Christian not heathen men. The office of 
the Catechism was to prepare the way for the Bible, not to 
take the place of it. " Whom should he teach knowledge ? 
and whom should he make to understand doctrine ? them 
that were weaned from the milk, and drawn from the 
breasts."* What the Apostle had said of the man and the 
woman,t might with equal propriety be said of the Bible 
and the Church. Neither was the Church without the Bi- 
ble, neither the Bible without the Church. Each was the 
complement of the other ; intended to be so by the divine 
author of both: and what God had joined together let not 
man put asunder. 

Casula. So he would put the Bible into the hands of the 
" unlearned and unstable," in the face of the declaration of 
S. Peter that they will pervert the hard places to their own 
destruction, — in the face of Dean Primitive's long list of 
such perversions ? 

Kayeo, Not at all. He would have all, he said, so train- 
ed by the Church, through her appointed agencies, the min- 
istry, the sponsorhood, the family, from the begioning, that 
when they had grow^n up there should be no " unlearned 
and unstable " ones among them : that they should all have 
been brought, to use the language of the Ordinal, { " unto 
that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to 
that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there 
should be no place left among them, either for error in reli- 
gion, or for viciousness in life." 

* Isai. xxviii. 9. 1 1 Cor. xi. 11. 

X Form and Manner of Ordering Priests. 



36 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

As to the " long list of perversions," they were the Dean's 
own, and he must be very " primitive " upon whom they 
could be palmed off. Take the three " examples " with 
which it wound up. " Each," we were told, though there 
was hardly occasion for telling us, " was unique of its kind : 
There was the example dogmatic ; the example critical, 
and the example evasive." To begin with the latter : 

" At an Archidiaconal meeting in a small town in Wilt- 
shire," on " a Friday," the " discussion at dinner," the en- 
tertainment being " both ample and succulent, including a 
haunch of venison, to which all had done justice" most 
scrwpuloudy ^ " turned," very naturally, " upon fasting ;" 
whereupon " an incumbent of the school of Mr. Kidds, hard 
pressed by various texts, and especially by the express 
words of S. Paul, from which there was no escape" did 
nevertheless escape by affirming that " Paul was a young 
man when he enjoined fasting, and probably became more 
scriptural afterwards." 

That was the- (theoretical) example evasive. He would 
match it with a practical one. When he was a resident of 
Richmond, Virginia, twenty-six years ago, an acquaintance 
of his, from whom he had the statement, was invited with 
a few others to dine, on a week-day in Lent, with the then 
Roman Bishop of that Diocese, and finding the dinner 
"both ample" and savory, if not "succulent," including 
fish stewed in claret, fell to, and like the Wiltshire clergy, 
did justice to it, — out of compliment, of course, to his host ; 
at the same time remarking, " Bishop, this may be a fast to 
you, but to me it is as good as a feast." 

Casula. That is a pretty story. 

Kayeo. So is the other. 

Casula, That may be. But evidently he was quizzing you. 

Kayeo, No ! He said he would be qualified to it,* which 

Father Kayeo, it will be seen, sometimes makes use of provincialisms 
in such cases, the verbal accuracy of what he reports, is not to he inferred. 
When one is in Rome, one is very apt " to do as Romans do." 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 37 

is more than Dean Primitive Tvould to Ms^ I am thinking. 
But I have not yet got through with the Wiltshire meeting. 
It reminded^him, he said, of yet another meeting, — a " min- 
isters' meeting," as it was called, — in Danvers, Massachu- 
setts, some two himdred years ago, where venison was like- 
wise on the bill of fare. Glrace had just been said, and the 
host was beginning to carve, when one of the guests, re- 
marking on the fine appearance of the haunch, asked where 
it had been obtained ? The host replied that it was a pres- 
ent from a friendly Indian ; to which Pomp Shorter, the 
black waiter, added — what his master was not aware of — 
that it was killed " last Sabbath " by the Indian himself. 
Here was a dilemma. Was it lawful to eat meat that had 
been killed on the Sabbath ? It was a knotty point ; but 
your Puritan, like your Jesuit, was a skilful casuist : so they 
were not long in coming to the conclusion that the meat 
might be eaten, since grace liad 'been said over it, but that the 
Indian should be flogged for killiag it on the Sabbath. 

Casula, A very sage conclusion. , 

Kayeo. So much for the '' Example evasive.''^ — Next came 
the '' example critical,'''' the substance of which was that at 
" a parish meeting in the north of England, presided over 
by a clergyman of great repute," the question of " contro- 
versy " coming up, one clergyman " strongly objected" to it, 
on the ground that it " quenched charity and led to no 
practical result ;" whereupon another loudly declared him- 
self in favor of controversy as productive of a clear under- 
standing of gospel truth ; " for did not Paul say, that 
^without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness,' 
and could he more clearly imply that with controversy all 
the mystery vanishes ? " 

This reminded him of the hard-shell Baptist preacher 

whom he had read of, or dreamed of, who argued from the 

" divers washings " (literally, " baptisms ") spoken of by 

the Apostle,* that a man must " dive," i. e., " be im- 

* Heb. is. 10. 



38 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

mersed," to be baptized. He rather thought that in both 
cases, so far as interpretation was concerned, nobody was 
hurt. 

Casula. Now we come to the " example dogthaticy^^ 
Kayeo, That, he said, brought to his remembrance a 
"controversy" between a priest of the Church of Rome and 
a priest of the Church of America — scene, the Infirmary in 
Lombard Street, Baltimore — time, a little more than twenty 
years ago. The American priest had been, like Simon's 
wife^s mother, " sick of a fever, "t but was, at the time re- 
ferred to, convalescent. The Roman priest, visiting the In- 
firmary to minister to some parishioners, and learning who 
he was, made his acquaintance, in the hope of converting 
him. The consequence was several interviews, in one of 
which the subject of Transubstantiation came up. The 
Roman priest began by remarking that the words. This is 
my l)ody^ like all the words of Holy Scripture, were to be 
interpreted literally. Oh, said the other, you couldn't teach 
him anything on that point ; he understood all about that. 
" Literally ? " ^ Of course^ they were to be interpreted liter- 
ally ; how else should they be interpreted ? What was lan- 
guage given for if it wasn't to be interpreted literally ? 
how, on any other hypothesis, was a plain man to get at its 
meaning ? Of course it was to be interpreted literally. Our 
Lord understood this, and he worded his declarations ac- 
cordingly. When He said, I am the Door^ He meant that 
He was a real door, just like the one which he (the Roman 
priest) had just come in at — which had swung on its hinges 
to admit him ; no difference between them ; none whatever. 
When He said, / am the Way^ He meant that he teas a real 
way, such as carriages were driven on, and heavy loads 

*'' The Twenty-eighth Article pronounced that the Catholic (!) doctrine of 
the Sacrament of the Altar is ' repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.' 
Now the plain words were : ' This is my body.' Consequently, when our 
Lord said : ' This is my body,' the plain meaning of His words was : 
'This is not my hodj.''— Comedy, p. 32. 

t St. Mat., viii., 14 ; St. Mark, i. 30 ; St. Luke, iv. 38. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 39 

drawn over ; no doubt of it ; none in the least. When He 
said, / am the Vine, He meant that He was a real vine, such 
as grows in the woods, and the fields, and bears grapes ; 
nothing could be plainer, to a plain comprehension. And 
when He said to Peter, Get thee hehind me, Satan, He meant 
that Peter icas the Demi, and that the Pope was his successor. 

Casula. A plague on the fellow ! If he goes on in that 
way, he'll turn the whole Comedy into a Farce. 

Kayeo. That is what he is after, and he seems in a fair 
way to do it. 

Casula. Still, he has not answered the argument of the 
" example dogmatic." 

Kayeo. He said he saw no argument in it, but a transpa- 
rent fallacy ; so transparent that if he didn't wonder that 
the Dean did not see through it, it was because he had no 
doubt whatever that he did see through it, but thought the 
groundlings wouldn't. They must be very low groundlings 
if they didn't. I agree with him on that point, and as you 
are no groundling, I am sure that you see through it ; if you 
don't /'ll furnish you with a pair of spectacles. 

If you were to say, The doctrine of Universal Salvation 
is " repugnant to the plain words of Scripture," and a Uni- 
versalist were to add, " Now the plain words are. As in Ad- 
am all die, even so in Christ shall all he made cdive,^'' — thinking 
thereby to convict you of absurdity — would you not say to 
him. You numskull l"^ Haven't you sense enough to see your 
own nonsense ? Must a doctrine, to be repugnant to the 
plain words of Scripture, be repugnant to all the plain 
words of it. If I say of a certain flower, it is ofi*ensive to 
me — meaning that its odor offends my nostrils — and, on an- 
other occasion, still speaking of the same flower, it is charm- 
ing — meaning that its beauty charms my eye — do I thereby 
say that it is not offensive to me ? 

Such would be your answer to the supposed " example 

* Father K., not being a Jesuit, can't stand such logic, any more than 
Pascal could stand the pouvoir p7vchain of The Company. 



40 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

dogmatic " of the Universalist ; such is my answer to the 
" example dogmatic " of the Dean, which hasn't half the 
plausibility of the other. Really, it makes me feel cheap to 
answer it. I am ashamed of such logic, and of you for even 
reporting it. Shakespeare, it is true, sometimes introduces a 
fool into his Comedies, but never such a fool. It only shows 
that you are not Shakespeare. 

Casula. I don't claim to be ; Shakesides is all I aspire 
to. 

Kayeo. To shake the sides of fools, is '' no great shakes," 
to my thinking. Enough of the Dean, and his logic. To 
come back to O'Kaye. 

Dr. Candour, he said, claimed a passing notice. He ob- 
jected to the taking of the Councils and the Fathers as lielps 
to the interpretation of Holy Scripture — and it was only as 
lielps that they could be legitimately taken — that the " pri- 
"cate reading " — that was, the individual's own reading (or 
interpretation), in distinction from the Church's reading, — 
" of the records of the early Church " was " the same in 
principle " with the ^'-ptrivate reading of the Bible ; with 
this advantage to the latter, that every one can read the 
Bible who can read at all, but not one person in a million 
can read the Councils or the Fathers." If those who could 
read the Bible could not, in the same way — to wit, in a 
translation — read the Fathers, it must be because they were 
so voluminous and expensive. But this objection did not 
apply to the " Apostolic Fathers," all of whose writings 
might be comprised in half a dozen volumes of the size and 
style of the Comedy of Convocation^ PeopWs Edition^ Price 
25 Cents. 

Mr. Lawrence Kehoe, General Agent of The Catholic 
Publication Society^ had come out, in the fly-sheet of the 
January number of The Catholic World ^ with a " Bulletin," 
• in which, among other things, he said, " It is our intention, 
therefore, to issue editions, printed from new type, on good 
paper, done up in paper covers, of all our own publications, 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 41 

and to place them at a price cheap enough to make it an 
object for the reverend clergy, religions societies, and the 
laity to purchase them in quantities for distribution. 

"The success of this experiment will depend on the sym- 
pathy and cordial cooperation of all Catholics. We are 
gratified in being able to state that our former appeals of 
this kind, with reference to ' The Comedy of Convocation ' 
and ' Gropings after Truth,' have been generously responded 
to ; and if the 'present one is met in the same spirit, we pledge 
oursehes that the complaint hitherto made a'bout the cost of 
Catholic 'booTcs shall not de heard again^ 

Mr. Kehoe was evidently desirous of doing good. Let 
him come out, then, with a " People's Edition " of the 
Apostolic Fathers, Ignatius, and Justin, and Pope Clement, 
and the rest. There could be no risk in undertaking it. 
All good Catholics would rather read the Epistle of a Pope 
whose name was in the book of life,* than the Comedy of 
an excommunicated heretic, a member of the Convocation 
of Canterbury. 

And what a treat was in store for them. It made his 
mouth water to think of it. They could find all about Pur- 
gatory, and Transubstantiation, and the Immaculate Con- 
ception, and Devotions to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints 
— Private, of course, in the case of the latter, for they were 
as yet only Beatified ; they must wait two hundred years, 
and then be Canonized, before Public Devotions could be 
addressed to them ; and the Church, too, must wait all that 
time, before her Public Devotions could be complete : the 
Blessed Virgin, by a happy Asswwption, was saved that 
long waiting. All this they would find in those Early 
Fathers for they were Catholics, and the " Catholic " 
Church never changed (except, of course, in the number of 
her objects of Devotion, which was ever increasing). Be- 
sides, they lived in the Martyr Age of the Church, before 
Devotion to the Virgin and the Saints had grown cold. 

* Phil., iv. 3. 



42 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Hence the frequency of their allusions to it ; out of the 
abundance of the heart the mouth spake. No wonder the 
Anglican Doctor disliked them, and especially the ^^ private 
reading " of them. He seemed to have a special grudge 
against that word ^^ private^'' for he had emphasized it re- 
peatedly. Yet it was a good word, though it was some- 
times found in bad company. Private opinion^ taken up at 
random without investigation, was the right of no one ; but 
private judgment^ formed with the help of all the means 
within reach for arriving at a correct conclusion, was not 
only the right but the duty of every one. The Catholic 
Publication Society appealed to it, in the 'broadest sense^ in 
sending forth a ''^ PeoijWs Edition" of the Comedy; that 
was, if they meant it for argument : and if they did not, 
they appealed to private prejudice— a proceeding which was 
anything but commendable. Nay the Church of Kome her- 
self, in one of her most solemn Offices — that of the Conse- 
cration of a Bishop — appealed to private judgment : " Do 
you believe, according to your intelligence and the capacity of 
your perceptive faculty (pr^ thinking faculty)^ the Holy Trin- 
ity," &c.,^ was the question she put to the Bishop elect, be- 
fore the laying on of hands ; certainly, there was nothing 
that went beyond that in the English Ordinal. 

Furthermore, every convert that had gone over to her in 
England, and in the United States, had gone over as the 
result of his private judgment or private want of judgment. 
Dr. Candour had assured us that " it was a fact that many 
Anglicans, like Dr. Ives, an American Bishop, were con- 
verted to the Roman Church, chiefly by the study of the 
Fathers and the Councils. These converts argued that the 
ancient writers required a living interpreter equally with 
Holy writ. 

They argued^ did they ? What right had they to argue ? 

* '' Credis, secundum intelligentiam, et capacitatem sensus tui, sanctam 
Trinitatem, Patrem, et Filium, et Spiritum Sanctum," &c.—PontiJicale 
Bomanum^ p. 89. Mechlin^ 1845. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 43 

What was arguing but private judgment ? And then the 
funny way the Fathers converted them ! — ^not by teaching 
them that the Koman Church was the true Church, but by 
teacMng them — nothing; whence they drew the inference 
that the Fathers couldn't be understood without " a living 
interpreter/'* meaning, thereby, a living dogmatizer. They 
couldn't understand the Fathers, so they came to the con- 
clusion that nobody else could : certainly, a very modest 
conclusion on their part. 

Gasula. He is right about its being private judgment that 
brings us converts, but that is no recommendation of it ; for 
it works boHh ways, and the Church loses more members 
than she gains by it. 

Kayeo. I am afraid that is so.f But it is time that we 
come to the " Professor of Theology." 

Gasula. Yes ! Let us hear what O'Kaye said of Tiim. 

Kayeo. He said that many of his points were but repeti- 
tions and enlargements of those of the preceding speakers, 
and need not be again considered ; but there were two or 
three that required touching on. The " Puseyite " motto, 
we were told, was " L'Eglise, c'est W6>i;" the "Catholic," 
on the other hand, " L'Eglise, c'est nous.'''' The " French- 
man " who said that, and, evidently thought he said a very 
smart thing, would very likely have to unsay it after the 



* Wherein is a living interpreter better than a dead one, unless you 
can consult him, either personally or by letter, when you are in doubt 
about the meaning of your author ? And if air the readers of the Fathers 
consult the Pope or his ^'Professor of Theology," or ''Professor of His- 
tory " (whichever of them is the interpreter), whenever they are in doubt, 
how is he to attend to them ? not to say that they ought to consult him 
even when they are not in doubt ; for their not being in doubt doesn't 
prove that they are right. In this respect, the interpreter who lives only 
in his works, has the advantage over the other, in that, if, as is usually the 
case, his comment accompanies the text of his author, the reader of the 
one is apt to read the other also, and to find thereby, not unfrequently, 
that where he had thought he understood the text he had in fact mis'ander- 
stood it. 

t See Note C. 



44 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

oecumenical Council next December, and say, in place of it, 
L'Eglise, c'est le Pape, 

Casula. I hope so. 

Kayeo. I don't. It is hard enough to explain the " ISTew 
Dogma," of 1854, and more than one of the eleven Older 
ones of 1564, without having another new one to bother us. 

The next point of the Professor of Theology was, that 
" but for the assiduous care with which, through more than 
a thousand years, the Roman Church preserved and mul- 
tiplied the manuscripts of Holy Writ, neither he (Mr. Kidds) 
nor any other Protestant could have known that there had 
ever been a Bible at all ! " As if there were no Greek 
Church ! As if the greater number of the most valuable 
manuscripts of the Original Text (to say nothing of the 
Ancient Versions) had not come lo us from the East, since 
the Reformation ! As though the Jews had not, with far 
more '' assiduous care," " preserved and multiplied " the 
manuscripts of the Old Testament ! In truth, had it de- 
pended on the Roman Church alone^ it was, to say the least, 
doubtful if there woul have been, at the Reformation, a sin- 
gle Greek or Hebrew copy in existence. For had she not 
constituted the Latin vulgate the standard of appeal,* and 
were not the Douay and the Rheimish versions made from 
it ? Of what use, then, on her theory, could the Original 
Text be, but to convict her standard of numerous inaccura- 
cies, and thereby give aid and comfort to the heretics ? 

The next point was the Professor's reply to the charge of 
Mr. Kidds that " the Roman Church forbade the Bible to 
the people ;" to wit, that she did ''just the contrary. She 
com'pelled the people to hear the Gospels and Epistles read 
from the pulpit every Sunday morning." Yes ! in Latin ! 
They might as well be read in Grebo, so far as nine-tenths 
of the hearers were concerned. Really he knew not which 
to admire most, the cool assurance of the Professor, or the 
candor of the Count De Maistre, who said, " As to the peo- 

* See Note D. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 45 

pie, if they didn't understand the words, so much the bet- 
ter. Kespect gained by it, and intelligence lost nothing. 
He who didn't understand at all, understood better than he 
who understood wrong."* 

Casula. Vive De Maistre I 

Kayeo, For my part, I prefer S. Paul, who says, " I thank 
my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all : yet in the 
church I had rather speak ^yq words with my understand- 
ing, that I might teach others also, than ten thousand words 
in an unknown tongue." And then, as if with the " Savoy- 
ard sophist " in his eye, immediately adds, " Brethren, be 
not children in understanding ; howbeit in malice be ye 
children, but in understanding be men."t But to return to 
the Professor. 

"Was Mr. Kidds ignorant that Roman Catholics confi- 
dently quoted the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, 
against Protestant doctrines ? Did he know that Cardinal 
Bellarmine quoted more than fifty texts in proof of Purga- 
tory ?" How could he, seeing the number the Cardinal 
quoted was exactly twenty-one — neither more nor less ? — 
" and that others quoted more than a hundred in defence of 
their confidence in the Blessed Virgin ? " As the Professor 
hadn't condescended to tell us who those " others " were, 
there was no means of verifying his statement ; if he had 
exaggerated in the same proportion as in the other instance, 
the number was just forty-two. Probably these were as 
convincing as the twenty-one of the Cardinal, of which lat- 
ter only one — that about being saved so as by fire — was 
even plausible ; and that one S. Chrysostom (whose mother 
tongue was Greek) interpretedf as teaching everlasting pun- 
ishment : while their works should be consumed, they 
should be always burning — -preserved in the fire, or by the 
fire, from being burned u;p. Evidently S. Chrysostom saw 
no Purgatory in it. 

For the rest, he would cite the first three, in the order of 
* See Note A, 42. 1 1 Cor. xiv. 18-20. X Homily on 1 Cor. iii. 15. 



46 AFTEEPIECE TO THE 

their occurrence in the Old Testament, and from them, all 
might be judged of; it would be enough to give chapter 
and verse for the remaining seventeen. 

" They took their bones and buried them under a tree at 
Jabesh, and fasted seven days." This fasting, according to 
the Cardinal, was for the souls of Saul and Jonathan ! 

" O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath ; neither chasten 
me in thy hot displeasure." " Wrath " meant hell ; " hot 
displeasure," purgatory. 

" We went through fire, and through water " — through 
purgatory, and through baptism — " but thou broughtest us 
out into a wealthy place."* 

To return again to the Professor : 

" Was anything more plain to the Papist than the declar- 
ation to Peter : ' Upon this rock I will build my church V " 
The Emperor Eudolph was a " Papist," yet according to 
the inscription on his diadem, as interpreted by the Count 
De Maistre, also a " Papist," the Rock was Christ.t " Was 
anything less ambiguous to him than the words : * This is 
my body ? ' Anything more decisive than the announce- 
ment : ' It is a wholesome and holy thought to pray for 
the dead ? ' [Archdeacon Jolly here observed to a neigh- 
bor, that the Church of England, as a quiet way of getting 
rid of this ' unscriptural ' text, ordered it to be left out, 
when it occurred in the Lesson for the day !] " 

The archdeacon must have been particularly "jolly" 
when he he made that " observation," for it was an unmiti- 
gated WHOPPER. The passage referred to was 2 Maccabees 
xii. 45, and in the whole Calendar of the Church of Eng- 
land, although there were Lessons from Tobit, and Judith, 
and Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus,' and Baruch, and Susan- 
nah, and even Bel and the Dragon, there was not a single 

* 1 Sam. xxxi. 13; Ps. xxxviii. 1, Ixvi, 12; Isai. iv. 4, ix. 18; Mic. vii. 8, 
9 ; Zech. ix. 11 ; Mai. iii. 3 ; Tobit iv. 17 ; 2 Maccabees xii. 394-5 ; Matt. v. 
22, V. 25, 26, xii. 32 ; Luke xvi. 9, xxiii. 42; Acts ii. 24 ; 1 Cor. iii. 12-15, xv. 
29 ; Phil. ii. 10 ; 2 Tim. i. 16, 18 ; Rev. v. 3. t See Note A, 50. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. - 47 

Lesson, or part of a Lesson, from either of the Books of the 
Maccabees. 

Casula. That can't be so. 

Kayeo. It is so, for I have examined the whole Calendar 
from beginning to end, and there is not the shadow of a 
foundation for the archdeacon's observation ; it is a wanton 
and deliberate falsification, and if, when it is brought to 
their notice, as O'Kaye said it should be at once, Mr. Law- 
rence Kehoe and the Catholic Publication Society do^not 
apologize for it publicly, and suppress it in all future issues, 
they will make' themselves wanton and deliberate falsifiers. 
Even as it is, if the charge were against an individual, they 
would be liable in heavy damages for slander. 

Casula, You are getting warm about it. 

Kayeo. Is there not a cause ? That the whole work 
should have suspicion cast upon it by so gross and wanton 
a fabrication ! And that, though the most glaring, is not 
the only, false assertion, as O'Kaye was careful to remind 
me, in citing the words of the Professor, " Instead of one In- 
fallible Pope, — who at least was never known to reverse the 
dogmatical decisions of those who had gone before him," 
and adding that, for brazen impudence, it would be hard to 
find their parallel ; for who did not know that Leo IL, by 
his official confirmation of the Decrees of the Sixth General 
Council, "reversed" ex cathedra the "dogmatical decis- 
ion " of " Honorius the Heretic " — so the Council called 
him — in behalf of Monothelism. The Count De Maistre and 
his confreres might wriggle and squirm* till doomsday, but 
there was the fact, and there it would remain ; for though 

* See a specimen of the Count's wriggling, Note A, 30-34. Those who 
would see the proof that the decision of Honorius was a "dogmatical " 
one will find it in a pamphlet by P. Le Page Renouf, a writer of the Roman 
Church, published in London, last year, under the title of The Condemna- 
tion of Pope Honorius^ and with the motto, 'Avddeiia 'OvopLGj AlperiK(j. 
In fact, the Count himself, in another part of his book, yields the whole 
claim, by admitting that both Liberius and Honorius, though pure in mor- 
als, have need of apology on the score of dogma.—See Note A, 85. 



48. AFTERPIECE TO THE 

they might strike it out of the Breviary,* they could not 
strike it out of history. But, not to speak of Liberius, 
who was claimed to have subscribed to^ Arianism under 
duress,t though the Breviary charged him with consenting 
to it,| the " decision " of Leo III. — verily there was more 
than one " Lion in the way " of the pretensions of modem 
Rome — against the addition of the filioque to the Creed 
(which was shown to be a " dogmatical decision " by his 
following it up with causing the Creed in its Constantino- 
politan form, without the filiogue^ to be engraved in Greek 
and Latin on two plates of silver, and set up in the Church, 
as a security against alteration), was afterwards " reversed," 
and that reversal had been kept to by all the popes now for 
more than three-quarters of a millennium, Pius lY. having, 
in 1564, " dogmatically " and categorically sanctioned the 
innovation, by imposing it as 'part of the old Greedy along 
with his eleven new Articles, upon all the " beneficed Clergy 
of the Roman Church." 

Casula. That is a long-winded sentence. 

Kayeo, It has taken the wind out of your sails. 

The next, and only remaining, point made by the Profes- 
sor was the difference of opinion existing in the Church of 
England, and tolerated by the Church, or at least by the 
Privy Council. The distinction was well taken, as the case 
of Colenso showed, whose condemnation had been pro- 

* '' Till the 17th century the Eoman Breviary spoke of the confirmation 
by Pope Leo n. of the holy Sixth Sjmod ' in which were condemned Cy- 
rus, Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, qui unam voluntatem et 
operationem in Domino Jesu CJiristo dixerunt vd prcedicaverunt.'' [Who 
maintained that there was but one will and operation in our Lord Jesus 
Christ.] The name of Honorius is no longer to be found in the Breviary ; 
the other names are still retained."— i^enoz^/", Condem. of Honorius, p. 6. 

t See Note E ; also Note A, 30. 

X " The Martyrology of Ado (14 Aug.) speaks of St. Easebius, ' qui 
prsesente Constantio, cum fldem Catholiccam constantissime defenderet et 
Liberium Papam doleret Ariance perfidise consensisse,' &c. These words 
occur in other mediaeval martyrologies, and they were formerly in the Ro- 
man Breviary, from which they were only struck out in the sixteenth cen- 
tvonYy—Berwuf, p. 44, Note. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 49 

nounced by the Church in no doubtful tones, her sentence 
having gone forth, His lyishoimck let another take. But here 
the Privy Council had stepped in and said, The temporal- 
ities of that 'hishoprick let not another take. In this there 
was no trespassing on the province of the Churcli : it was 
.clearly a case for the State to decide, notwithstanding points 
of doctrine or discipline were incidentally involved ; just as 
they were in the cases between the two wings of the Con- 
gregationalists decided by the Courts in Massachusetts forty 
years ago ; just as they were in the case between Bishop 
McQuaid and certain laymen of his diocese,"^ decided but 
the other day, and decided against the Bishop. t In none 
of those cases could exception be legitimately taken to the 
jurisdiction, whatever might be thought of the character of 
the decision in any or all of them. 

Gamla. There is no doctrine involved in the decision 
against the Bishop. 

Kayeo. That might be, he said, or it might not be : it 
mattered not to the argument. The trouble grew out of the 
attempted removal of the pastor by the bishop : for aught 
that appeared in the reports that he had seen in the papers, 
it might have been for heresy ; and it was equally true that 
it might have been for something else : it made no differ- 
ence; the jurisdiction attached in the one case as undoubt- 



* " A scene occurred in a Roman Catholic Church at Auburn, N". Y., on 
the 21st. The Bishop having removed the old pastor and appointed a new 
one in his place, the congregation refused to allow him to oflEiciate. Some 
of the most prominent members led him from the altar out of Church, and 
compelled the Bishop to follow him. The affair is not likely to end with- 
out further trouble."— i?02^?i(^ Table, Feb. 27. 

i- Telegraphic Despatch to the Associated Press : 

" The Auburk Church Diffcultt.— ^?/5wm, N. T., February 25.— The 
trial of several leading members of the Catholic Church of the Holy Fam- 
ily, for disturbing divine worship on Sunday last, resulted in their acquit- 
tal, the jury being out but a few moments. 

'' The complaint was made by Bishop McQuaid and Rev. M. Kavanaugh, 
ejected from the Church on Sunday morning, the congregation refusing to 
listen to them." 
3 



50 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

edly as in the other. The Count De Maistre, speaking of 
the Greek Emperors lording it over the Popes, had said that 
the Church ought not to refuse to an obstinate civil sover- 
eignty anything that produced only inconveniences.* Now 
deprivation of temporalities was only " an inconvenience," 
though sometimes a very grave one. If in any instance 
the Privy Council had meddled with spiritualities except 
as they involved temporalities, it had, sq far, enslaved the 
Church to the State ; but, as the Count had said in another 
place, " Among Catholics even, had we not seen the Galli- 
can Church humiliated, fettered, enslaved by high magis- 
tracies ? "t The Count's remedy — enslavement to the Pope 
— was worse than the disease ; for the State did set some 
limits to its encroachments in spirituals, but the Pope set 
none to his. 

Casula. But the charge is that the Church herself, even 
when not hampered by the State, tolerates differences on 
points of doctrine. 

Kayeo. Yes, he said, the Church of England tolerated 
differences of opinion on points of doctrine, and so did the 
Church of Eome. As Ffoulkes, one of their own writers, 
said, " Even the decisions of the Council of Trent failed to 
put down controversy upon points of detail which it had 
left open — no less than the Confession of Augsburg. There 
were Molinists and Jansenists, Galileans and Ultramontanes, 
amongst Catholics : to be set against Arminians and Contra- 
Eemonstrants, Puritans and High Churchmen amongst 
Protestants."J 

Casula, But those differences were not on matters of 
faith. 

Kayeo. They l)oi'e on matters of faith. The controversy 
between the Molinists and the Jansenists involved differences 
of opinion on the effects of baptismal grace as great, to say 
the least, as those of High Churchmen and Low Church- 

* Note A, 43. t Note A, 44. t Christendom's DivisionB, p. 171. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 51 

men. That between the Franciscans and the Dominicans 
was on a subject that had in our own day been made an 
article of faith ; and that between the Ultramontanes and the 
Gallicans was expected to be brought to an issue in the com- 
ing (Ecumenical Council. Fortunately, the result, if no ac- 
cident happened to the Atlantic Telegraph, could be promul- 
gated nearly simultaneously throughout Christendom. In 
1854 it was not so : the decree that went forth on the eighth 
of December, was over threeweeks in crossing the water ; the 
consequence was, the members of the Roman Communion in 
the United States actually kept their Christmas without 
knowing what the Faith was ! 

One word more, and he would have done with the Pro- 
fessor. The picture of Dr. Pusey and Mr. Jowett, Brother 
Ignatius and Mr. Bellew, Archdeacon Denison and Dr. 
M'Neile, was evidently drawn in convenient obliviousness of 
the old adage about people in glass houses. Let any one 
who doubted its applicability in the present instance turn 
to Mr. Ffoulkes's work already referred to — it was advertised 
on the cover of the " Comedy " as a " Catholic Book " — 
and read pages 231-233. He would cite a single sentence : 

'' As if the persecution of all orders by the State was not 
bitter enough, one order attacked another with such viru- 
lence, that upon one occasion the writings of Father Baker, 
one of the most spiritual of 'all the converts of that date, 
were proscribed, as containing 'poisonous and diabolical 
doctrine.' " 

Really, he must say such imputations were very unseemly 
in the members of an infallible Church with an infallible 
earthly Head. When the Church of England claimed to 
come within that category, he would answer for her, she 
would authenticate the claim by securing a mechanical har- 
mony of opinion, or rather, noii-ojnnion^ among her mem- 
bers; — the only harmony infallibility of the Roman type 
eould secure, as was proved by the late troubles of Bishop 
McQuaid: the Holy Family — that was the name of the 



52 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Aubtirn Church — could be made a " Happy Family " not 
even as Barnum's was — by the fear-inspired repression of in- 
stinctive antipathies. " Every kind of beasts, and of birds, 
and of serpents, and of things in the sea, was tamed, and 
had been tamed of mankind ; pnt the tongue could no man 
tame,"* — not even an infallible Pope, with an infallible 
Church behind him. 

But enough of the Professor. 

Dr. Easy came next, and he was easily disposed of. His 
office of Prolocutor — for he seemed to have taken the office 
upon him, to the prejudice of the real incumbent — led him 
occasionally " to submit," as Father Weninger saidf of S. 
James at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 13-21), " some 
disciplinary remarks." Anything in them in the way of ar- 
gument had been anticipated by the other speakers. His 
Easiness, therefore, need not be disturbed. Bequiescat in 
pace I 

Casula, O'Kaye evidently knows who need attending to 
and who do not. 

Kayeo. The next in order was Archdeacon Jolly's propo- 
sition to change the answer to the question in the Cate- 
chism, " How many sacraments are there ? " from " Two only, 
as generally necessary to salvation " to " Two only, 2i^ form- 
erly necessary to salvation, but one of them not so necessary 
now as it used to be ;" and Dean Blunt's amendment to "the 
proposition, " Two only, as equally -z^Tinecessary to salvation, 
but baptism to be viewed as rather an impediment to salva- 
tion than otherwise." He would propose a substitute for 
both the amendment and the original proposition, so as to 
adapt the answer to the use of Rome : How many sacra- 
ments are there f Four-and-a-lialf only^ as generally neces- 
sary to salvation ; the other half ^^ formerly " in much esteem^ 
lut '''not so necessary noio as it used to ^^."t Besides these, one 

* S. James iii. 7, 8. t See Note F., 1. 

$ Cardinal Bona acknowledges that " always, everywhere, from the very 
first foundation of the Chm-ch to the 12th century, the faithful always com- 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 53 

other"^ necessary to a j^avt of mankind for the salvation of the 
rest^ and onef not necessary at alL^ dut decidedly " an impediment 
to salvation f^ for which reason^ the Clergy^ who had so many 
other impediments, might not receive it, lut only give it to the 
laity, ivho having so few impediments in comparison witb 
the Clergy, could afford to run the risk of this additional one. 
But whether the Clergy could afford to "he thus accessories lefore 
the fact, was somewhat questionable.''^ " Thou shalt not put a 
stumbling block before the blind." " Thou shalt in any 
wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. "J: 

Gasula. When he talks of half a sacrament, he forgets 
the declaration of the Creed of Pope Pius that "under 
either kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and a 
true sacrament." 

Kayeo. No ! he does not forget it ; but he remembers the 
declaration immediately preceding it in the same article of 
the Creed, that " a conversion is made of the whole sub- 
stance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole sub- 
stance of the wine into the Blood," and he sees, as a man 
of sense, that if the whole substance of the bread is converted 
into the Body, no part of it can possibly be converted into 
the Blood. Hence he very properly takes the declaration 
you cite, in a pickwickian sense.§ 

Casula. The answer cited from the Anglican Catechism 
represents the two sacraments of the Church of England as 
only generally necessary to salvation. It follows that she 
•does not hold them to be absolutely necessary. 

municated under the species of bread and wine : " and that " at the begin- 
ning of that century the partaking of the cup began gTadually to go out of 
use." '' Semper-enim et ubique, ab ecclesise primordiis usque ad s^eci- 
lum duodecimum, sub specie panis et vini communicarunt fideles : coepit- 
que paulatim ejus saeculi initio usus calicis obsolescere." — Bona, Rct, Li- 
turg. L. ii., c. 18, n. 1. See Bingham, J.7^^'^g. xv. V. 1. — The disuse was 
first decreed by the Council of Constance, June 14, 1415. 

* Orders. t Matrimony. % Lev. six. 14, 17. 

§ It will be observed that Father Kayeo here speaks against his own 
Church. In this he but follows the example of the merry Comedians. Evil 
communications corrupt good manners. 



54 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Kayeo. That is an unwarranted inference: "generally 
necessary " means necessary to men generally, to the genus 
liomo^ to mdjikind. This was a common meaning of the word 
two hundred years ago, and it is still so used by the mathe- 
matician, who, when he speaks of a particular proposition 
as true of triangles generally^ means, of all triangles, — of the 
genus triangle. 

Casula. Does she hold their absolute necessity, then ? 

Kayeo, No ! She says they are necessary to the salvation 
of man, just as you or I would say that food is necessary to 
the life of man, which nobody will pretend to dispute, 
though men have been knowTi to live for da^^s, and even 
weeks without it. She admits exceptional cases, and so 
does the Roman Church. Peter Lombard says that " God 
has not tied His grace to the sacraments."* S. Thomas (on 
baptism) says that " to adults living under the law of na- 
ture, faith alone was sufficient ; since even now it is suffi- 
cient to him who does not from contempt neglect the sacra- 
ments ;"t and (on the eucharist) that " necessity dispenses 
mth the sacrament.''^ The Bull Unigenitus condemns the 
proposition of Quesnel (on S. Luke x. 35, 36) — the 29th of 
the 101 — that " grace is not given outside the Church."§ In 
fact, there is a general consent on that point. 

Casula, Well, let that pass ; and let us return to O'Kaye, 
and Archdeacon Jolly, with his Society for Tceeping alive the 
corruptions of Popery in the interests of Gospel truths and his 
Anglo-Metropolitan and General Superstition Repelling Asso- 
oiation. 

Kayeo, Archdeacon Jolly was welcome to the compan- 
ionship. He (O'Kaye) preferred to take up the sophistries 

* '' Qiiibus (sacramentis) non alligavit potentiam suain Deus."— >S'e?i^., Z. 
iv., dist. 1, §4- Clomp, dist. iv. § 5. 

t '' Quantum ad ddultos in lege naturae sufficiebat sola fides ; cum etiam 
modo sufliciat el qui non ex contemptu sacramenta dimittit."— ^. 2, 
Art. 6. 

X "Articulus necessitatis sacramentum excludit.'" — Q. 3, Art. 3. 

§ "Nulla extra ecclesiam conceditur gratia." 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 55 

of Archdeacon Chasuble, and show their flimsiness : — " If 
the Catholic Church were not infallible at one period of her 
existence, — for example, when she decreed the Canon of 
Holy Scripture, — what assurance," we were asked, "had 
they, or could they have, that they possessed the true Bi- 
ble? Saints had differed widely about it, so widely as to 
reject books now admitted to be canonical, while they ad- 
mitted others now rejected as spurious. In the fourth cen- 
tury it was still an open question, till, at length, it was 
finally decided by the authority of the Church. If the 
Church were not infallible, what was the decision worth ? " 
In reply, he would remark, first, that the " worth " of a de- 
cision depended on its accuracy, and not on the infallibility 
of him who rendered it ; and, secondly, that, in the case in 
hand, there was no "decision" properly so called. The 
Canon rested on the " authority " of the Church, as the 
fact of the battle of Marathon, or of Actium, rested on the 
" authority " of history. " It was allowed," said Westcott, 
" even by those who had reduced the genuine Apostolic 
works to the narrowest limits, that from the time of Ire- 
ngeus the New Testament was composed essentially of the 
same books as we received at present, and that they were re- 
garded with the same reverence as was now shown to 
them."* It " rested on no authoritative decision " simply 
because "none was needed." The Councils of Laodicea 
and of Carthage, one hundred and fifty years later, " intro- 
duced no innovations, but merely proposed to preserve the 
tradition which had been handed down ;"t and these were 
merely provincial councils — that of Laodicea, " in fact only 
a small gathering of clergy from parts of Lydia and Phry- 
gia."J In the Council of Mce, which was prior to these, 
and in all the other (really) General Councils, the Canon 
was never discussed or acted on ; it was taken for granted. 
There needed no infallibility, in the Roman sense. The Prov- 

* History of the Canon, Cambridge (Eng.), 1855, p. 8. 
tid, p. 490. $ Id., p. 498. 



56 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

idence of God authenticated and perpetuated (as might 
have been inferred a prioo^i it would) what the Spirit of 
God had inspired. The logic w^hich proved the infallibility 
of the Church by the declaration of Scripture, and then 
turned round and proved that Scripture was Scripture by 
the declaration of the Infallible Church, might do at the 
Vatican, but it would not do elsewhere. 

Casula, The fellow is hard to please : he is always deny- 
ing your premises, or picking a flaw in your argument. 

Kayeo. It is a bad habit he has got into, owing to his 
bad bringing up : if Mother Church — stepmother he was so 
irreverent as to call her ; he never knew a mother, he said, 
younger than her daughter, but he had known a step-mother 
to be so ; and a step-mother Eome had proved herself, in 
more senses than one : Jerusalem was our mother — the Vision 
of Peace; not Rome — the daughter of Mars,* and the incar- 
nation of brute force — if Mother Church had had the hand- 
ling of him with the help of " neighbor Dominic and his 
red-hot pincers," she would have taught him better man- 
ners : but we must get along with him as we can. To pro- 
ceed with his criticisms. 

What had been said of the Canon of Scripture, was 
equally applicable to the " building " of creeds, and the 
" constructing " of liturgies, and whatever else was neces- 
sary to the security of the Truth : the Providence of God 
might be safely trusted to uphold the Ark of God, without 
the help of a presumptuous, because unbelieving, Uzzah. 
The Archdeacon could not see how a fallible Church (mean- 
ing, fallible in the modern Roman sense,) could be a Teach- 
ing Church, it " having," to adopt Dean Critical's way of 
putting it, "no infallibility, and therefore no divine author- 
ity." It was equally hard to see how a fallible Bishop could 
be a Teaching Bishop, or a fallible Priest a Teaching Priest. 
Yet S. Paul laid it down as one of the qualifications of a 

* Xaipe [jlol Ta)/^?7, dvyarep "Aprjog \ 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 57 

Bishop that he should he " apt to teach,"* " holding fast 
the faithful word as he had leen taught^ that he might he 
able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the 
gainsay ers ; "t and he gave in charge to S. Timothy, " The 
things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, 
the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall he able to 
teach others also."]: Besides, Archbishop Spalding, of Bal- 
timore, and Bishop Domenec, of Pittsburgh, fallible as they 
were acknowledged to be, undertook, nevertheless, to inter- 
pret Infallibillity itself, uttering itself through an Encyclical 
and Syllabus^ and condemning no less than eighty Proposi- 
tions. " When Leibnitz, corresponding with Bossuet on the 
great question of the reunion of the Churches, demanded, 
as an indispensible preliminary, that the Council of Trent 
should be declared non-oecumenical, Bossuet," we were told 
by the Count De Maistre, *' justly inflexible on that point, 
declared to him nevertheless that, to facilitate the great 
work, they could go back on the Council lyy way of explana- 
tion. Let it not be wondered at, then," added the Count, 
" if the Popes have sometimes permitted them to go back on 
their decisions 'by way of explanation^^ How Archbishop S. 
and Bishop D. " went back on " the Pope in the instance 
referred to, might be seen in the Appendix to the Comedy of 
Canonization. He would cite a . specimen, and refer me to 
the said Ap)p>endix for the rest, and to the authorities there 
given. The Pope, in the Encyclical., less than ^yq years ago, 
had said, as translated in the Dublin Beview^ April, 1865 : 

" Against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and 
of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that 
' That is the best condition of Society, in which no duty is 
recognized as attached to the civil power, of restraining, by 
enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, 
except so far as the public peace may require.' " This the 
Pope declared to be a ." totally false idea of social govern- 
ment ;" and he added that those who held to it did not 

* 1 Tim. iii. 2. + Titus i. 9. :}: 2 Tim. ii. 2. § See Note A, 22. 
8* 



58 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

fear " to foster that erroneous opinion, ^ * * ^ called by our 
predecessor Gregory XVI. an insanity, viz., that ' liberty of 
conscience and worships is each man's personal right, which 
ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly 
constituted society,' " &c. 

On this, Archbishop S., "in his Pastoral Letter which 
published the Encyclical to the faithful " in the United 
States, "went back" after the following fashion : 

"To stretch the words of the Pontiff, evidently intended 
for the stand-point of Euroi3ean Radicals and Infidels, so as 
to make them include the state of things established in this 
country, by our noble Constitution, in regard to the liberty 
of conscience, of worship, and of the press, were manifestly 
unfair and unjust. * * * Therefore their action " — that 
of the framers of the Federal Constitution — " could not 
have been condemned or even contemplated by the Pontiff, 
in his recent solemn censure, pronounced on an altogether 
different set of men with a totally different set of princi- 
ples." 

And Bishop D., " in a Pastoral proclaiming the Jubilee 
for his Diocese," in this wise : 

" By no means, venerable and beloved brethren, does the 
Pope condemn the religious toleration or freedom of con- 
science which we " — the members of the Roman Commun- 
ion ? — " enjoy in America • * --{^ * No, no, the Pope does 
not condemn any just, fair, and reasonable toleration, or 
freedom of worship." 

It reminded him of Captain P.'s " explanation." Meet- 
ing Mr. E., an Israelite acquaintance, one day, the captain 
said to him, among other things : You ought to hear our 
minister, Mr. B. (Unitarian) ; you agree very well : he don't 
believe that Christ is God, and you don't believe that Christ 
is God. You'd like him, I'm sure; come and hear him. 
Mr. E. said he would. Accordingly, on the following Sun- 
day he was found sitting in the captain's pew. But, as ill 
luck would have it, Mr. B. preached on the crucifixion, and 



COMEDY OP CONVOCATION. 59 

expressed himself very strongly on the part the Jews took 
in it. Returning home Mr. E. said to Captain P., What did 
yon invite me to come and hear B. for ? he abused the Jews 
shamefully. Oh, said the captain, with a little lingering of 
the quarter-deck about him, he didn't mean you, gentlemen 
Jews ; he meant those watch-selling sons of ^ ***** * \ — gQ 
with the Pope's Encyclical, He did not mean you, gentlemen 
'' Radicals and Infidels " of the United States ; he meant 
those watcli-selling Radicals and Infidels of Europe ! 

Casula. Very fairly put ! Why couldn't the Archbishop 
let the Encyclical speak for itself, and not make such a 
milk-and-water mess of it ? 

Kayeo. Why need there have been an Encyclical that re- 
quired explaining ? If the Pope did not mean to include 
the American "Radicals and Infidels," why couldn't he say 
so ? and if he did mean to include them because he thought 
they were like the European ones, why couldn't he have in- 
quired about them of the Archbishop, before committing 
himself to an infallible Encyclical ? He could have told 
him how unlike they were ; as unlike as two peas ! Will it 
be said that he did mean to include the American " Radi- 
cals and Infidels," but not the framers of the Constitution ? 
The obvious answer is, that if lie didn't mean to include 
their icorlc — that part of it, that is, that secures liberty of 
conscience — then he didn't mean to include anything at all. 
The plain truth is, the Encyclical &-pi[)TOYes of religious lib- 
erty so far as it is a liberty to be subject to the Pope; so far 
as it is a liberty not to be subject to him, it disapproves 
of it. 

Casula. You have hit the nail on the head, this time. 

Kayeo. To come back to O'Kaye. '' How," asked the 
Archdeacon, " could there be a revelation from God to man, 
— unless there existed a living authority upon earth to teach 
man infallibly what that revelation was ? " How, he would 
ask in reply, could that be a revelation, which required an 
'' authority " to teach man what it was ? in other words, to 



60 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

re'Geal it ? Revelation shone, not, indeed, in its own light, 
but in the reflected light of the Sun of Righteousness. The 
Pope held up his farthing candle to help us see the Moon ; 
but instead of helping us it hindered *Us, by partially blind- 
ing our eyes. The candle might be the better light for him 
who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, beyond his nose ; 
but for one who sought to take in the whole landscape, the 
moon was decidedly superior. 

Again : " The notion of a fallible Church, founded by an 
infallible God, was," we were assured by the Archdeacon, 
" an absurdity and a contradiction." If so, the notion of 
a fallible man created by an infallible God, was " an absurd- 
ity and a contradiction." Therefore, Adam w^as infallible. 
And as an infallible man could not beget a fallible man, any 
more than an infallible God could create a fallible man, it 
followed that we were all infallible ; as indeed, we must be 
(as he had already shown),* to make the Pope's infallibility 
of any use to us. 

Casula, He is always choking me off with a comparison. 

Kayeo. Yes, he forgets that comparisons are " odorous," 
and that the odor, in the present case, must be, to you at 
least, anything but a pleasant one. 

There was but one other of the Archdeacon's points that 
required notice — the Diabolical Millennium^ so called. "When 
the Anglican homily gravely asserted that the whole Church 
of God — the home of the saints and martyrs — had been 
' sunk in the pit of damnable idolatry by the space of nine 
hundred years and odd,' it made the heart sick to think 
that they were themselves the heirs of the very men who 
had uttered such stupid profanity." The precise words of 
the homily were, " by the space of eight hundred years and 
more;" but "eight hundred" did not come quite near 
enough to his " millennium," so he must needs add another 
hundred. But let that pass. The Archdeacon's object evi- 
dently was to discredit the statement of the homily by a 

*P. 11. 



comeJdy of convocation. ()1 

reductio ad dbsiirdum^ that was to say, by suggesting that if 
the statement were true, the Church had become . extinct. 
Unfortunately for the argument, the language of Holy Scrip- 
ture on the Idolatry of the " Church of God — the home of 
the saints and martyrs " — was equally strong. The whole 
history of the chosen. people was full of it, as might be seen 
in the Books of Judges and Kings ; it was summed up in 
the twentieth chapter of Ezekiel : " In the day when I chose 
Israel, * * ^ I g^id unto them, * * * defile not 
yourselves with the idols of Egypt. * * .* But they re- 
belled against me, * * * neither did they forsake the 
idols of Egypt " (verses 5, 7, 8). "Yet also I lifted up my 
hand unto them in the wilderness, * * ^^ for their heart 
went after their idols" (vv. 15, 16). "When I had brought 
them into the land ^j^ * * there they presented the 
provocation of their offering" (v. 28). "Are ye polluted 
after the manner of your fathers ? * ^ "^ ye pollute your- 
selves with all your idols, even unto this day " (vv. 30, 31) ; 
and in the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah (vv. 28-31) : 
" Behold I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, 
* * "^ with the houses, upon whose roofs they have of- 
fered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink-offerings unto 
other gods, to provoke me to anger. For the children of 
Israel and the children of Judah have only done evir before 
me from their youth : for the children of Israel have only 
provoked me to anger wdth the work of their hands, saith 
the Lord. For this city hath been to me as a provocation 
of mine anger and of my fury from the day that they built 
it even unto this day ;" viz., the year 590 before Christ : to 
which year, reckoning from the beginning of the Exodus of 
the children of Israel out of Egypt, 1491 B.C., was exactly 
nine hundred years and odd^^ And as to the entireness of 
the corruption, it was to be read in the earlier chapters of 
those same prophets, and especially in the beginning of the 
" vision of Isaiah, which he saw concerning Judah and Jeru- 

* The Chronologies differ, but onlj^ hy a few years. 



62 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

salem," one hundred and fifty years before: "The whole 
head is sick, and tlie whole heart faint. From the sole of 
the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it ; but 
wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores." Such was the 
picture of the Church of God, especially in the seventh and 
eighth centuries B.C., as drawn by the pen of Inspiration : 
such was the picture of the Church of God in " those terri- 
ble ninth and tenth centuries," and " thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries," after Christ, as drawn by Roman histori- 
ans themselves.. " We might say, literally^'''' said the Count 
De Maistre, " asking pardon for the familiarity of the ex- 
pression, that toward the tenth century the human race, 
in Europe, had gone crazy. * * * To defend the Church 
from the frightful deluge of corruption and ignorance, 
there was needed no less than a power of a superior order, 
and entirely new in the world, — that of the Popes. But 
the Popes themselves, in this unhappy age, paid a fatal 
though passing tribute to the general disorder. The Ponti- 
fical chair toas 02:)pressed, dishonored and Moody.'''' The Count 
went on to complain of the " bad faith which insisted with 
so much asperity on the vices of some Popes, without saying 
a word on the frightful dissoluteness which reigned in their 
day;" and added that he had " always had, with regard to 
that sad epoch, a thought that would absolutely give utter- 
ance to itself. When courtesans all-powerful, monsters of 
licentiousness, and wickedness, profiting by the public dis- 
orders, got possession of power, disposed of everything at 
Rome, and bore into the chair of S. Peter, by means the 
most culpable, either their sons or their lovers, he (the 
Count) denied most expressly that those men were Popes."''' 
If they were not Popes, where, on the Roman theor^^, was 
the Church ? If they were Popes (and he believed the Count 
was tlie only one that had ever doubted it), then indeed was 
"the whole head sick." As to the Count's apology for the 
Church, from the corruption of the times, what was this but 

* See Note A, 45-47. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 68 

an acknowledgment that "the salt," which should have 
prevented that corruption, had itself " lost its savor V 

ISTor was the Count the only one who admitted the awful 
corruption of the Church. In the Council of Constance, 
which deposed three rival Popes, Gregory XII., Benedict 
XIII., and Alexander Y., and put Martin Y. in their place, 
the assembled fathers, in their third session (March 25, A.D. 
1415), declared that "they would not separate till not only 
the schism had been healed, but the whole Church, head 
and members, reformed in faith and mannersy'^ Adrian 
YI. declared to Chieregato, that " in that holy seat there 
had been many enormities then for some years : abuses in 
spiritual things, excesses in what had been ordained — all 
things, in short, perverted ;" that the " disease" had "found 
its way from the head to the members;" that they, the 
" prelates," had all " turned aside every one to his own way ;" 
and that there had not been " for a long while any that 
would do good — no, not one."t "Behind and besides all 
this," said Ffoulkes, "there was the undeniaNe fact of im- 
mense corruption in the Church, so great and manifold as to 
shalce tlie helief of men in lier divine credentials. Luther 
both saw and felt it."t De Maistre admitted as much by 
speaking of the " immense chapter of reform " in the pro- 
ceedings of the " Council of Trent."§ 

Gasiila. But the charge was idolatry, and there is nothing 
of idolatry in all this. 

KoAjeo. That was true, but did not affect the argument, 
which was two-fold : first, that if the idolati-y of the chosen 
people did not affect the being of the Jewish Church, then 
neither did the idolatry charged by the homily, if true, affect 
the being of the Christian Church ; and secondly, if the 
acknowledged "immense corruption" of the "head and 
members," in other words, of the whole body, from the sole 
of the foot to the head, " in faith and manners," did not 
affect the being of the Christian Church, then neither did 

* See Note H,, 7. t Note H, 8. 1:Id., 9. § Note A, 84. 



64 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

the idolatry charged by the homily, if true, affect its being. 
"Whether it was, or was not true, was a matter of opinion. 
About the acts on which the charge was grounded, there 
was no dispute : the homily charged that those acts involved 
idolatry; those who engaged in them denied the charge. 
Much might be said, and had been said, on both sides. As 
the merits of the question, however, did not affect the argu- 
ment, they need not now be entered into. 

The last of the speakers in Convocation was Dr. Candour. 
His objection, in reply to the Archdeacon, "that it was a 
defective arrangement that mfallibility should have existed 
in the purest ages, when Christians were of ' one heart and 
one mind,' and consequently had less need of it," was as 
well taken as the Irishman's objection to the sun as com- 
pared with the moon, that he shone in the day-time when 
we had no occasion for him. According to the Roman 
theory, Infallibility was the cause of the unanimity among 
the early Christians ; according to Eoman ijractice, as illus- 
trated in the case of the " new dogma," it was not a cause 
at all : it put off its decision till there was nothing to de- 
cide ; sometimes, as in the case referred to, leaving its exer- 
cise in abeyance for six hundred years. 

Again. "The promise to guide the Church into ^ all 
truth,' " the Archdeacon was represented as maintaining, 
"had reference only to the integrity of truth, l)eforei\iQ 
mission of S. Augustine to England, and aftei' the publica- 
tion of the ^ Tracts for the Times.' " It had reference to 
neither, for the simple reason that there was no such promise. 
There was a promise to " the eleven disciples" that the " Spir- 
it of truth " should guide them into all truth,"^ and in another 
part of the discourse, the way in which he would do it was 
specified, namely, by " teaching them all thinojs, and 'bringing 
all thing 8 to their rememtrance whatsoe'Der He {Christ) had said 
unto them^-f That this promise, if made to the Church at 
all, — and it was only by implication that it was even sup- 

* S. John xvi. 13. tid., xvi. 26. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 65 

posed to have been made, — was confined to the Church of 
the Apostolic Age, Some of whose members had seen and 
heard the Lord, was certain, since its fulfilment to the post- 
apostolic Church would be a physical impossibility ; it was 
not within the sphere even of omnipotence to make a man 
remem'ber what he had never known. The post-apostolic 
Church needed no such promise ; it had only to " keep, by 
the Holy Ghost, which dwelt in its members, that good thing 
which had been committed to it,"* namely, "the faith,'' 
which, as S. Judas not Iscariot assured us, had been " once 
for all delivered to the saints."t This was the teaching of 
S. John himself in his First Epistle, written when the 
Apostolic was giving place to the post-apostolic age : " Ye 
have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. 
^ ^ ^ Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have 
heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard 
from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall con- 
tinue in the Son, and in the Father. ^ ^ * The anoint- 
ing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye 
need not that any man teach you ; but as the same anoint- 
ing teacheth you of all things, and is the truth, and is no 
lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him."]; 
Two things only were wanting to the "integrity of truth" 
in the Communion of Saints, — in other words, to its conti- 
nuity in time and place, so far, at least, as salvation was 
concerned, — namely, the objective truth handed down in 
the Church, from the beginning, and the subjective disposi- 
tion toward the truth, wrought in the hearts of the faithful 
by the anointing of the Holy Ghost ; where the former was 
lacking, the salvation of the individual was in peril ; where 
the latter was lacking, his salvation was impossible. — The 
Eeverend Doctor's "twelve hundred years" between S. Au- 
gustine and the Tracts for the Times, " during which all 
Christians obstinately believed the supremacy of the Pope, 
the oflice of the Mother of God, and the Mystery of Trans- 

* 2 Tim. i. 14. t Jude 3. $ 1 John ii. 20, 24, 27. 



66 AFTERPJECE TO THE 

substantiation," beat the " Diabolical Millennium " out and 
out : it was enough to make a well-in:P5rmed Roman Church- 
man grin, and a Greek Churchman laugh outright. Had 
the Doctor never read the history of the Council of Flor- 
ence ? He would find an admirable compendium of it in 
Ffoulkes's Christendom'^ s Dimsions, Part ii. Let him turn to 
page 352, and read what was there written : "After sub- 
scribing (to the Decree concerning the filioque)^ they (the 
Greek Bishops) returned to the Emperor,* who entertained 
them for a time with marked smiles and courtesy. Then 
without giving them the least hint or warning of his inten- 
tions, he sent a deputation of them — ten in number, of 
whom Syropulus " (the Greek Historian of the Council), 
" was one — with Bessarion at their head, to the Pope, whom 
they found sitting in state surrounded by his bishops and 
cardinals. A notary was present. 'Bessarion without hesi- 
tation — for he had been well primed " by the Emperor, 
" beforehand — commenced making a profession of the doc- 
trine of transubstantiation in the name of his brethren. 
'• Notary, write that down,' said Cardinal Julian. It was 
written down, and is preserved ;t but no more was said of it. 
The artifice was too transparent. The Emperor for once 
had been too abrupt ; but as the decree was signed, he 
thought he was safe ; and it certainly had no effect what- 
ever on the results." — Now, why was Bessarion "primed" 
by the Emperor to make a profession of transubstantia- 
tion in the name of his brethren, if the doctrine had, 
as the Doctor asserted, been held by them ever since the 
mission of S. Augustine to England, that was to say, 
more than eight hundred years ? and why did there come 
from that " priming," even then, only a flash in the pan ? 
Was the Canon, that had been so long in their possession, 

* He had come with them from Constantinople, to transfer them, body 
and soul, to the Pope, on condition of the Pope's securing to him, from 
the Western Powers, men and means for his defence against the Turks ; 
and he was now at work for the fulfilment of his part of the bargain. ^ 

t " Colet (a Roman authority), tom. xviii., p. 540." 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 67 

rusty? Evidently, "the Mystery of Transubstantiation " 
had not been " obstinately believed " by some Christians dur- 
ing the 1200 years. — As to the " office of the Mother of 
God," if it was an office that involved her immaculate con- 
ception, it was not " obstinately believed " by the Greeks, 
nor "oery " obstinately " by S. Bernard, who, in the very 
middle of the 1200 years, wrote a letter in which he " obsti- 
nately " maintained that there was the same necessity for 
the immaculate conception of the Virgin's mother, and 
grandmother, and great-grandmother, and great-grand- 
mother's great- grandmother, Rahab and Thamar included, 
all the way back to mother Eve ! Then for the " supremacy 
of the Pope " — it was a queer kind of supremacy (to say 
the least) which the Greeks had " obstinately believed " for 
the last 400 years, to say nothing of the preceding 800. — It 
wouldn't do. The Doctor must try again. And he had 
tried again, and with as laughable a result as before : "In 
the Roman sense, which, at least, was rational and intelli- 
gible, it (' Catholic ') meant the absolute oneness in doctrine 
and discipline of all the Churches which compose the Cath- 
olic communion." 

Casula. He has passed over that part about " the promise 
that the ' gates of hell ' should ' never ' prevail against the 
Church." 

Kayeo. That, he said, secured the perpetuity of the 
Church, but not its infallibility, any more than its impecca- 
bility. Now no one denied that the Church had existed 
from the beginning and that it would exist to the end. — 
But to come back to the declaration, just cited, about the 
" absolute oneness in doctrine and discipline." When he 
read it last, he thought he would ask the Doctor a few 
questions ; but the GJiurchma^ (Hartford, Ct., March 6,) had 
saved him the trouble : "Now we wish to ask whether to 
the ' submitted Greeks,' so called, the Greek liturgy is not 
allowed ? We wish to ask whether a status precisely that 
of a married clergy in every thing but the marriage service 



68 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

is not tolerated through the whole of South America, Mex- 
ico, and Guatimala ? We wish to ask if in certain branches 
of the Oriental Churches which have submitted to Rome, 
the marriage of the clergy has not been allowed? We, 
desii'e to learn if it has not been represented by Roman 
ecclesiastics, in a position to hiow, that the appi'o aching 
Council would debate the modification of the celibate rule ? 
If we are mistaken upon these points, we have only to say 
that we have been misinformed. We were also under the 
impression that Pope Julius did direct Cardinal Pole to 
reconcile Bishops ordained by Edward's Ordinal without 
reordination, and that another Pope was not unwilling in 
Elizabeth's time to allow the use of the English Prayer Book." 
On that last point the Churchman was certainly right in its 
impression. Pope Pius lY., in a letter to Queen Elizabeth, 
dated May 5, 1560, and sent by the hand of Yincentius 
Parpalia, did offer to " confirm the Prayer Book." * Nor 
was this an exceptional instance. Innocent III., in a long 
letter to Morosini, the new patriarch of ConstantinoiDle, in 
answer to the fourth of his queries, said : " You have asked 
for instruction of the apostolic see, respecting the euchar- 
istic rite, and that of the other sacraments ; whether you 
should allow the Greeks to celebrate them in their own way, 
or compel them to adopt that of the Latins — to which we 
reply briefly, that if you cannot get them to change, you 
may tolerate them in their own rite, till the apostolic see 
shall have decreed otherwise on more mature deliberation." t 
The Fourth Lateran Council, held under the same pope, 
decreed, in its ninth canon : '' Since in many parts, within 
the same state and diocese, people of different languages are 
mixed up together, having different rites and usages under 
the same faith, we enjoin strictly that the prelates of such 
states or dioceses should appoint proper persons, who should, 
according to the differences of those rites and tongues^ cele- 

* Heylin, Hist. Eliz., London, 1670, p. 131. 
t Ffoulkes, C. Z)., Part ii., p. 209. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 69 

brate Divine service for them and administer the sacraments 
of the church, teaching them both by word and example." * 
" Nevertheless, " wrote Innocent lY., to his legate, A. D., 1254, 
" as some of the Greeks have returned to their duty to the 
Apostolic see, and have been for some time past heeding and 
obeying it reverently, it is both lawful and expedient, by 
toleratiug their rites and customs, as far as we can before 
God, to retain them in their obedience to the same 5 * hc h^ 
The Greeks may use their own office" (of the eucharist), 
" but not celebrate before their matins are over, nor later 
than the ninth hour, * * * Married priests may hear 
confessions, and impose penances." t " If you can manage," 
said Alexander lY., to his legate, the bishop of Orvieto, 
A.D., 1256, "to get the Greeks to assent to other terms 
more advantageous and honorable to the Eoman church — 
more adapted to the work of reconciliation — do not be in 
too great a hurry to propose the foregoing, still less to ac- 
cept them. But if you find that you cannot possibly do 
better, then accept them discreetly, (!) as you may judge ex- 
pedient, in our name and that of the Roman church." \ One 
of these "terms" ran thus: — " 7. In questions of faith, the 
pope to give his opinion, as he may see fit, before all others : 
to be received, by all others obediently, provided it contains 
nothing contrary to the institutions of the gospels or of the 
canons." Why here was the very thing that Dean Criti- 
cal,§ following the Count De Maistre,|| thought he found in 
the Sixth of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was mistaken ; 
for the Church, in that Article, w^as laying down the rule 
for herself as teacher, not for those whom she taught ; but 
here there was no mistake : for the seventh of the " terms " 
laid down the rule for the bishops and others to be guided 
by in determining whether an " opinion " given by the Pope 
in a matter of faith was to be " received " by them. ISTo 
wonder Alexander wanted his legate to " get^"^^ if he could 

* Id., pp. 222. 223. t Id., p. 24T. t Id., p. 251. 

§ Comedy, p. 25. !l Note A, 83. 



70 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

" manage " to do it, " other terms, more advantageous and 
honorable to the Roman church." " In the very same 
moment, with the very same pen, with the same ink," et 
cmtera. 

Casula. He has disposed of the " absolute oneness " as to 
" discipline," but not as to " doctrine." 

Kayeo. , He thought the Seventh '' Term," above cited, 
struck at it ; but, not to mention that, — nor the First Canon 
of the Fourth Lateran Council (at the beginning of the thir- 
teenth century), " affirming the procession of the Holy Ghost 
from the Son as well as the Father," * nor the Creed of 
Clement lY., (in the middle of that century), with its six 
"additional articles," one affirming purgatory, and another 
the supremacy of the Pope,t — " a new creed twice in fifty 
years," to use the words of Ffoulkes { — there was the Creed 
of Pius lY. with its eleven additional articles, and the 
Creed of Pius IX., with its one additional article in esse, and 
half a dozen more, perhaps, in posse ! Really, when he con- 
templated the Candid Doctor's " absolute oneness in doctrine 
and discipline " in the light of these unquestioned and un- 
questionable historical facts, he felt like saying with S. 
Gregory, and the merry archdeacon, " Give me leave to be 
merry on a merry subject." 

The First Scene had now been disposed of, with the ex- 
ception of the " Branch-theory," and that would be more 
conveniently considered after the question of Orders. He 
proposed therefore, with my consent, to adjourn the discus- 
sion till the next day, when he w^ould be happy to see me in 
" his own hired house." 

* Foulkes, C. Z)., Part ii., p. 220. t Id., pp. 262, 263. X Id., p. 263. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 71 



SCENE II. — A Scene loitliin a Scene — O'Kaye's Library. In 
other respects as in Scene I. 

Kayeo. Calling, the jiext clay, according to appointment, 
I was shown into O'Kaye's Library. Unlike '' Dr. Easy's 
Drawing-Room," it was a place suggestive of hard work 
and hard fare. I saw in it no portraits of the Misses O'Kaye, 
for the very satisfactory reason that no Mistress O'Kaye, as 
I afterward learned from one of his neighbors, had ever 
crossed the threshold. But what surprised me most, I saw 
but few books, and those of recent date. He had had the 
misfortune to lose his library by fire some ^yq years ago. It 
was a very serious inconvenience, for, oftentimes, as he 
would be writing, he would have to lay down his pen in 
mediis rebus and go two or three miles to consult some one 
of the many public or private libraries to which by the 
kindness of his friends he had access. When, at my request, 
he had undertaken to read the Comedy a second time and 
to give me his opinion of the argument, not thinking it 
right, the example of the Comedy to the contrary notwith- 
standing, to deal in random assertions, he had sought, 
where facts were drawn in question, to fortify his statements 
with an impregnable rampart of authorities. 

And here let him say, once for all, that whatever allega- 
tions of importance he had passed over, were of the very 
class of random ones just hinted at ; and he proposed to 
leave them unnoticed till such time as their anonymous, and 
therefore irresponsible, and thence reckless and unscrupu- 
lous author or sponsor should condescend to give chapter 
and verse for them — which, for his part, he did not believe 
he (or any body else) could do in a single instance. He had 
caught him in a right -out fib where he had had the temerity 
to give chapter, if not verse: he was justified therefore in 
taking all that he had given neither for, as a tissue of his 



72 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

own manufacture. With this broom, then, he swept away, 
at one stroke, all the " cobwebs to catch flies " (how much 
better to have set a " trap to catch a sunbeam ") which this 
industrious and persevering spider had spun out of his own 
bowels on his entrance into the drawing-room. 

Gasula. The web has caught a wasp, this time. 

Kayeo. Be it so : but a wasp, even with legs entangled, 
is more than a match for a spider, any day. 

The subject of the drawing-room discussion was the valid- 
ity of Anglican Orders, and the Professor of History, or 
rather, — for the Archdeacon had evidently made a mistake 
in the title of the chair, — of Romance^ had the floor — he 
begged pardon — rthe ottoman ; * and certainly he was as 
ignorant on the subject as an Ottoman, or as romancing as a 
Eoman. His first objection to the " Ordinal of Edward YI." 
was, that " that form '' was '''"uewP The same was true of 
the Roman " Pontifical," which had not always been what 
it was now. His next objection was that " it did not t con- 
tain one word of Episcopal consecration ; " and yet, if he 
had read that Ordinal, he Icnew that it opened with, " Most 
reverend Father in God, we present unto you this godly and 
well learned man to be consecrated UsJiop; " — that the Lita- 
ny forming a part of the Ordinal ended with this prayer : 
" Almighty God, giver of all good things, which by thy 
Holy Spirit hast appointed dwe7's 07'ders of ministers in thy 
church ; Mercifully behold this thy servant, 7iow called to the 
worlc and ministry of a NsJiop;''^ &c., — that the "Form," J 
with the rubric immediately preceding, ran thus: "Then 
the Archbishop and Bishops present shall lay their hands 
upon the head of the elected Bishop, the Archbishop saying, 

* " The Professor of History rose from an ottoman, and then, in compli- 
ance with a general request, stood upon ity— Comedy ^j). 73. 

t The italics are the Professor's. 

X The v/ord ''Form" has two senses: in the broad sense, it means the 
whole Ordination Service ; in the restricted or technical sense, which is 
the one in which it is here used, it is confined to the words accompanying 
the laying on of hands. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 73 

4 

Take the Holy Ghost, and remember " &c. The rest as in 
the present English, and American, Ordinal; — that after 
that, came the following rubric : "Then the Archbishop 
shall proceed to the communion, with whom the new conse- 
crated Bishop with others shall communicate." 

Gasula. The Professor did not mean that the Ordinal 
" did not contain one word of Episcopal consecration," but 
that " the form " — namely, at the imposition of hands — did 
not ; those are his very words. 

Kayeo. No, those are not his very words ; the words are, 
" that form." Even if they had been, " the form," they 
would have been ambiguous, and calculated, not to say, 
intended, to mislead ; but as they are, there is no ambi- 
guity in them. Take the whole sentence as it stands : — 
" Thus, with respect to the Ordinal of Edward VI., which 
had been recently discussed in certain public journals, he 
could not seriously advise his reverend friends to argue that, 
because that form was new^ it was therefore necessarily 
Catholic." * " Tliat form." What form ? The form just 
mentioned^ namely, the Ordinal^ whose very title is, The 
Form and Manner of making^ ordaining^ &c. The demonstra- 
tive '' that," as plainly and necessarily has reference to the 
word " Ordinal," as the relative, " which ; " it cannot possi- 
bly have reference to any thing else. Even if it could, it 
would help the Professor's veracity but little, and that little 
at the expense of his logic. As the sentence stands, it 
would be to the point if it were true ; as you just now rep- 
resented it as standing, it would, in your interpretation of it, 
be true, but not to the point ; for neither does the (restricted) 
form in the Koman Pontifical contain " one word of Episco- 
pal consecration." 

Gasula. I should like to see you undertake to make that 
out. 

Kayeo. O'Kaye made it out for me. First, he took down 
Abp. P. R. Kenrick's Validity of Anglican Ordinations 

* Comedy, p. 74. 



74 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Examined. Second Edition, (containing a Reply* to Dr. 
Evans). Philadelphia, 1848; and opening at page 194 put 
it into my hands. I read as follows : 

" As the Church has not defined what part of the cere- 
mony of ordination is that called the ' form,' theologians 
have enjoyed on this subject a speculative freedom of opin- 
ion which does not at all interfere with the observance of 
the whole rite prescribed in the Roman Pontifical. 

" Having premised this, I shall state the opinion which 
appears best sustained by argument ; namely, that the form 
of ordination consists in the prayer which accompanies the 
second imposition of hands in the ceremony of ordaining 
priests, and the prayer ' Propitiare ' in that for the consecra- 
tion of Bishops." 

Having read thus far, I returned the book to O'Kaye. He 
then handed me a copy of the Roman Pontifical^ beautifully 
rubricated, and full of engravings illustrating the various 
ceremonies. Its title ran thus : 

" Pontificale Romanum dementis YIII. ac Urbani YIII. 
jussu editum, inde vero a Benedicto XIV. recognitum et 
castigatum. Cum additionibus a sacra rituum congregations 
adprobatis. Pars Prima. Mechlinise. P. J. Hanicq, summi 
Pontificis, S. Congregatipnis de Propaganda Fide et Archiep. 
• Mechl. Typographus. M. D. CCC. XLY." 

Turning to the Forma " De Consecratione Electi in Epis- 
copum," I found, on page 95, the following : 

'' Then the Consecrator and the assisting Bishops touch 
the head of the person to le consecrated^ with both hands, 
saying : 

'' Take the Holy Ghost." t 

The very words of Edward VI. 's Ordinal. 

* Dr. Evans replied to this in 1851, and so effectually that the Abp. did 
not venture on a rejoinder. It is a pity some of the smaller fry hadn't 
his discretion. 

t " Deinde Consecrator et assistentes Episcopi amhahus manibus caput 
Consecrandi tangunt dicentes : 

'' Accipe Spiritum sanctum.'" 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 75 

t 

" Which having been done, the Consecrator standing, his 
mitre having been laid aside, says : 

" Be propitious, O Lord, to our supplications, and from 
the horn of sacerdotal grace inverted over this thy servant 
pour upon him the efficacy of thy benediction. Through 
our Lord Jesus Christ," &c.* 

On page 101 is the anointing of the head of the Bishop 
Elect.\ 

On page 108 is the anointing of the hands of the Bishop 
ElectX 

Then follows : 

" And making with his right hand the sign of the cross 
three times over the hands of the Bishop J^lect^ he says : 

" Li the name of God the Father, and the Son, and the 
Holy ahost,"§ &c. 

Up to this time, you will observe the candidate is called, 
not Bishop, but Bishop Elect, notwithstanding the prayer 
"Be propitious," .which Abp. Kenrick thinks is the "form," 
occurs thirteen pages back. 

Next we have the Prayer : 

" The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has 
willed that thou shouldest be raised to the dignity of the 
Episcopate," &c.|| 

And then the rubric : 

" The foregoing things having been thus gone through 
with, the Consecrated Bishop joins both hands," &c.^ 

Here, for the first time, we have him declared consecrated. 

* '' Quo facto, Consecrator stans, deposita mitra, dicit: " 

" Propitiare, Domine, supplicationibns nostris, et inclinato saper hunc 
famiilum timm comu gratiaj sacerdotalis, bene»f«dictioiiis tuae in eum 
effunde yirtiitem. Per DominTim nostrum," &c. 

+ '' Caput Electi." % " Palmas Electi." 

§ " Et producens manu dextera ter signum crucis super manus Electi, 
dicit : " 

" In nomine Dei Pa»fitris, et Fi»filii, et Spiritus 4* sancti," &c. 

11 " Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, qui te ad Pontificatus sub- 
limari voluit dignitatem, ipse te," &c. 

*[ '' Praemiesis itaque expeditis, Consecratus jungit ambae manus," &c. 



76 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Now whichever of the foregoing we take for the " form," 
there is not in it, any more than in that of the Ordinal of 
Edward YL, " one word of Episcopal consecration." 

Gasula. Even if that is so, it doesn't help the matter, for 
the form for ordaining Priests in Edward's Ordinal is cer- 
tainly invalid, and as " the episcopate is but the plenitude 
of the priesthood " a man must be a priest before he can be 
made a bishop. 

Kayeo. That is a point I found made by Archbishop 
Kenrick,* and I called O'Kaye's attention to it. In reply, 
he called my attention to a question of Mr. Ffoulkes. I 
told him I had heard, since my former interview with him, 
that Mr. F. had b«en put in the " Index." He was not sur- 
prised at that, he said : it was a way that Rome had of 
dealing with those she could not answer. It was a way she 
had, I said, of securing her children from contamination, 
and every father that was worthy the name sought to secure 
his children in a similar way. Yes, he . said, while they 
were children ; but he sought at the same time to train them 
to a Christian manhood ; whereas Rome sought to Icee'p them 
children — contrary to the exhortation, already cited, of S. 
Paul :t " Brethren, be not children in understanding : how- 
beit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be 
men." But if Rome thought to shield herself, in this way, 
from the damaging revelations of " Christendom^ s JDivis- 
ions^'''' she was reckoning without her host ; her attempted 
suppression of the book was a confession that she could not 
answer it ; he should continue therefore to cite it as author- 
ity : it was the same now, as when the " Catholic Publica- 
tion Society " advertised it, only last year, on the cover of 
the Comedy, as a Catholic Book ; if the Society didn't 
know what was Catholic, so much the worse for them : it 
would account, perhaps, for their publishing the Comedy. 

But to return to the question : 

^' Where," asked Mr. Ffoulkes, "had the Church pre- 

• * Validity, &c. , p. 189. 1 1 Cor. xiv. 20. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 77 

scribed any one form by default of which episcopal," or, he 
might have added, priestly, " ordination was rendered in- 
valid?"* Quien sahiaf That there was some "form," 
some where, in the Pontifical — in the office for the ordina- 
tion of priests, as well as in that for the consecration of 
bishops — was a natural, and not very violent, presumption ; 
but what it was, and where it was, not a Koman of them all, 
not even the Pope himself, with all his infallibility, could 
tell. S. Somebody t thought it was this ; Archbishop Ken- 
rick| thought it was that ; Peter Dens § thought it was the 
other. And he (O'Kaye) agreed with Peter Dens : he was 
satisfied it teas " the other. '''' But about the form in the Or- 
dinal of Edward YI. there was no doubt. It was the form 
of the oldest Ordinal extant — that by which S. Peter was 
ordained — and ran thus : — " Take the Holy Ghost ; whose 
sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins 
thou dost retain they are retained." If S. Peter was a priest, 
then so far as the " form " was concerned — and it was the 
form only that was here in question — those ordained by the 
Ordinal of Edward YI. were priests also. If those words 
would not suffice to make a priest " after the order of " S. 
Peter, he would like to know what words would ? I sug- 
gested to him the words of the Pontifical : " Receive the 
power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Masses for 
the quick and the dead." To that suggestion he had three 
objections : first, that Archbishop Kenrick, as I had already 
seen, did not thinh that those words were the " form ; " sec- 
ondly, that Bellarmine was sure they were not the form, for 
the form was inseparable from the imposition of hands,] 

* Note H., 22. t See the quidam in the next note but one. 

X See the citation already given. 

§ " Satis convenit inter authores, Impositionem Manuum sub hac forma, 
'Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,' esse Materiam, cui quidam addunt imposi- 
tionem codicis Evangeliorum super caput Ordinandi."— 2Vac^. de Ord, 
Petri Dens, torn, vii., p. 47, Dublin, 1832. 

II " Convenit inter omnes, materiam esse aliquod signum sensibile, for 
mam antem esse verba, quae dicuntur, dum illud signum exhibetur- 
* * * ScripturiB passim tradunt pro symbolo extern© Ordinationis 



78 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

and here the imposition^ if any, was of a very diiferent kind, 
the words being accompanied solely by the " porrection of 
the instruments," or, as an Anglican would phrase it, the 
delivery of the chalice and paten ; thirdly, that the theory 
brought in a new " Diabolical Millennium," worse, to some 
apprehensions, than the old one of the Homily ; for he chal- 
lenged the whole Church of Eome with the infallible Pope 
at the head of it, to show a single instance in which the 
words in question were used in ordaining a priest " by the 
space of" the first "nine hundred years and odd ;" so 'that 
here we had, on the theory that those words were essential 
to the conveyance of priestly power, " the whole Church of 
God — the home of the saints and martyrs " — '^ sunk in the 
pit of damnable " unpriestliness, for the first half of its en- 
tire existence ! 

Casula. Archbishop Kenrick has another objection to 
the Ordinal of Edward YI., to wit, that it means the words 
about remission and retention of sins in the Protestant 
sense,* and therefore means to make a Protestant and not a 
Catholic priest. 

Kayeo. That is true, and I pointed it out to him. When 
the Archbishop, he said, would be so good as to tell him 
what the Protestant sense was, and what a Protestant priest 
was, he would tell the Arphbishop whether the Ordinal 
meant the words in the Protestant sense, and the priest to 
be a Protestant priest. Of one thing he (the Archbishop) 
might be sure, namely, that it did not mean the words in 
the Tridentine sense, or the priest to be a Tridentine priest. 
And of another thing he might be equally sure, namely, 
that it did mean the words as they were meant in that 
grand old Ordinal of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — 

Manus Impositionem. * * * Manus Impositio est pars Sacramenti 
essentialis ; non enim gratias promissio facta est cseremoniis acciden- 
tariis, sed essentialibiis. * * * Idemprobo ex traditione Pontificum et 
Coiisiliorum.'"— D^^Sacr. Ord.^ lib. i., c. ix., col. 1284 ; Colon. ^ 1619. (Quoted 
by Wolcott on the Ordinal.) 
* Validity, &c-., p. 189. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 79 

grand in its simplicity — and to make every one that it or- 
dained just such a priest as S. Peter was, and no other. 

Casula. How did he meet the accusation that " Charles 
II., one hundred and twelve years after the new form began 
to be used, pronounced it invalid by substituting another in 
its place ? " 

Kayeo. He met it by a denial. There was no substitu- 
tion (except of the word ^'Eeceive " for the word " Take," 
which latter word had then come to be commonly used in 
an active sense), but only an addition. The earlier form 
ran, " Take the Holy Ghost : whose sins," &c. The later 
form ran, " Receive the Holy Grhost for the Office and Work 
. of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee 
by the Imj)osition of our hands. Whose sins," &c. The 
addition of these words, we were told, " pronounced " the 
earlier form "invalid." The words " Receive the power to 
offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Masses for the quick 
and dead," were the only ones addressed to the Candidate 
for ordination to the priesthood in the Church of Rome, 
over and above those of the Ordinal of Edward VI., that 
could by any possibility be supposed to " express the nature 
of the power conferred : "* did the addition of these to the 
Roman Ordinal less than a thousand years ago, "pro- 
nounce " that Ordinal " invalid " for the first " nine hun- 
dred years and odd ? " Really, for a Professor of History, 
the objection was ineffably silly. 

Casula, He has passed over two of the allegations. 

Kayeo. Ko, it is you that passed them over. 

'They pertained not to the validity of Orders, but to juris- 
diction ; and jurisdiction, in England, as in France, and, in 
fact, in all countries where the Church was established, held 
of the State. 

The first allegation, or rather, insinuation, was that be- 

* " This form (of the Ordinal of Edward VI.) is, then, insufficient : it 
does not express tlie nature of the power conferred, and this is an essential 
defect.''— Kenrick, Validity, Sc, p. 189. 



80 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

cause the Ordinal was " annulled " in the reign of Queen 
Mary, it must have been illegal in that of Elizabeth. None 
but a Professor of Roman manufacture, and manufactm-ed, 
too, out of very " raw " material, would have ventured on 
such an insinuation ; and even he didn't venture to assert it 
outright, for he knew that the annulment in the reign of 
Queen Mary was by act of Parliament, and that it was re- 
stored by act of Parliament in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth. 

The second allegation was that " Queen Elizabeth, labor- 
ing under the temporary impression that she was Almighty 
God, ' dispensed with all causes and doubts of any imperfec- 
tion of the same.' " Where the Professor got the clause he 
professed to quote, he had not condescended to inform us. 
Neither had he put us in a position to determine what 
" same " referred to. If it referred to the Ordinal the alle- 
gation was not true ; if to anything else, it was not to the 
point. What Queen Elizabeth really undertook to do, was 
given by Archbishop Kenrick (in the text of his work) in 
English, and (in the Appendix) in the original Latin of the 
Queen's Mandate : 

" Supplying nevertheless by our supreme royal authority, 
from our own mere motion and certain knowledge, if in 
those things which you shall do according to our mandate, 
or in you, or in your condition, state, or faculty, for the ac- 
complishment of the foregoing, there be anything wanting, 
or to be wanting, of what is required or necessary in this 
case hy the statutes of this realm^ or Ixy the ecclesiastical laws — 
the circumstances of the time and the necessity of the thing 
so demanding it."* 

The " necessity " which this dispensation was designed 
to meet was this : according to law, three bishops in posses- 
sion of Sees were required, to confirm the election of a bish- 
op, as also to consecrate one. When Elizabeth came to the 
throne, several of the Sees were vacant ; the rest were filled 

* Validity &c.,p. 39. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 81 

with bishops in communion with Rome, not one of whom 
would have anything to do with confirming and consecrat- 
ing Parker, whofti the Queen had caused to be elected to the 
vacant See of Canterbury by the Dean and chapter thereof. 
The Queen therefore undertook to dispense with that pro- 
vision of the law which required the confirming and conse- 
crating bishops to be in possession of Sees, and accordingly 
issued her mandate (containing the dispensing clause just 
cited from Kenrick), *ithorizing Barlow, formerly Bishop 
of Bath ; Scory, formerly Bishop of Chichester, and Cover- 
dale, formerly Bishop of Exeter (all of whom had been de- 
prived of their Sees under Queen Mary), and Hodgkins, 
once suffragan of Bedford, to confirm the election of Par- 
ker, and then to consecrate him. Three months before this, 
she had sent a mandate to Tunstal, Bourne, Pool, Kitchin, 
Barlow, and Scory. As the first four of these were in pos- 
session of Sees, if they consented to confirm and consecrate 
Parker, as it was hoped they would, there would be no need 
of a dispensation. Accordingly that first mandate con- 
tained none. This of itself showed that the dispensation 
had nothing whatever to do ^ith the Ordinal, or with the 
validity of the Orders of the Consecrating Bishops. In 
fact, there was no controversy at that time about the valid- 
ity of the Ordinal, as was proved by the fact that those who 
had been ordained by it under Edward, and conformed un- 
der Mary, were not required to be reordained."^ It was de- 
fects in jurisdiction only, that were sought to be supplied ; 
now jurisdiction was solely a human arrangement, and, as 
sucH, subject at all times to the control of the human law- 
making power, and no Professor of History who had a rej)- 
utation to lose, would venture to assert the contrary. 

He had now disposed of all the allegations and insinua- 
tions in the paragraph on page 74. In answer to the insinu- 
tions in the short paragraph next following, he referred me 
to Lingard (one of our own historians) and Ffoulkes, ex- 

* Heylin, HM. JRef.—Hist. of Qiieen Mary, p. 36. 
4* 



82 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

tracts from whose works he would hand me, and I could 
yerify them at my leisure.* 

Gasula. Did you verify them ? 

Kayeo. I did ;, and they bore him out in his allegations 
in refutation of the before-mentioned paragraph on page 74, 
and disposed, also, of the other paragraph. Proceeding to 
the allegations on the next six pages, two of them — that 
which charged cowardice on " the early Anglican bishops," 
and that about the infrequency of Communion — he disposed 
of, so far as they bore on the argument, by certain extracts 
which he would' hand me, and which he had no doubt I 
should find satisfactory.f The rest of the allegations, in- 
cluding the disjointed fragments on page 79 for which, for 
a wonder, chapter and verse were given, had no weight 
whatever /<97* the purijose for loJiich they were hrought /(xrward. 
Statements thrown out in the heat of controversy by indi- 
viduals as such, could not be weighed against the deliberate 
and well-considered utterances of their former ofiicial acts. 
This was the dictate of common experience and common 
sense. Against the alleged declarations, then, of the Angli- 
can Reformers in disparagement of Orders and Succession 
he would set, as, to even the commonest apprehension, abso- 
lutely conclusive of the whole controversy, the admitted 
fact that the Preface to the Ordinal was written by Cran- 
mer, and was sanctioned and ratified by his associates ; and 
that ran thus : 

" It is evident unto all men diligently reading the holy 
Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time 
there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church : 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Which Offices were ever- 
more had in such reverend Estimation, that no man might 
presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, 
tried, examined, and known to have such qualities as are 
requisite for the same ; and also by publick Prayer ; with 
Imposition of Hands, were approved and admitted there- 

* See Note H, 18-35, t Note E, aijcl Note H, 14, 15. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 83 

unto by lawful Authority. And therefore, to the intent that 
these Orders may be continued, and reverently used and es- 
teemed, in. the Church of England; no man shall be ac- 
counted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon 
in the Church of England, or suffered to execute any of the 
said Functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and 
admitted thereunto, according to the Form hereafter follow- 
ing, or hath had formerly Episcopal Consecration or Ordi- 
nation." 

Any one who, in the face of this solemn declaration, could 
seriously maintain a presumption against the continuity of 
Anglican Orders, from the alleged, and perhaps (for he had 
not troubled himself to verify the accuracy of the citations, 
as they had no earthly bearing on the argument) actual, ut- 
terances of individual Anglican Reformers, had need that 
some one teach him " which be the first principles " — the 
veriest elements — of reasoning. 

But how, it might be asked, came those Reformers to give 
forth such utterances ? The key to their course might be 
found in one of the citations from Hooper : " The Jews 
had sacraments as well Us we, and yet never brawled about 
them as we do." — They were disgusted with the everlasting 
dinning into their ears the outside of the Church, as though 
it had no inside. The homely proverb of our ancestors re- 
minded those who were too much enraptured with the ex- 
ternal of the human form divine that ''beauty was but skin 
deep ;" which was certainly true, as Apollo no doubt found 
out when he flayed Marsyas. Now there were those who were 
for flaying the Church, to get at the holiness beneath ; on 
the other hand, there were those who seemed to look upon 
her as all skin ; no bone, and muscle, and sinew : no heart, 
and mind, and soul, and strength ; no quickening spirit. 
Or, to change the figure, there were those w^ho seemed to 
think Dress was everything, and who therefore went on 
piling upon her pannier upon pannier, flounce upon flounce, 
furbelow upon furbelow, of rites and ceremonies, till she 



84 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

looked more like a bedizened harlot than like the chaste 
bride of Christ, and wanted little of being smothered in her 
lendings. No wonder those who found her gasping, and 
succeeded in stripping off the cumbrous additions, when 
they saw the reviving influence of the fresh air upon her, 
came nigh going on with the disrobal, and leaving her shiv- 
ering in the cold, without clothing enough to keep in the 
vital warmth. One extreme begat another. The real won- 
der was that the English Reformers should, in their public, 
official acts, have kept so closely as they did to the old, 
Catholic way in which the Fathers walked in the beginning, 
and found rest to their souls. No doubt, as the Count De 
Maistre said, it was " the English good sense," that " pre- 
served the hierarchy ;"* but surely the hand of God was 
in it. 

Casula. They did more than merely speak, in the heat 
of controversy, against the altar. " The greatest English 
prelates, including Eidley, ordered every Catholic altar to 
be pulled down and utterly defaced." t 

Kayeo. Yes, they did what Hezekiah did to that type of 
Christ,! " the brazen serpent that Moses had made," when 
he saw that " the children of Israel did burn incense to it."§ 
The old, catholic altar of the " unbloody sacrifice " had be- 
come the new, Tridentine altar of a bloody offering, and 
was leading men away from the " one oblation once offered " 
— the " full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and 
satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world," ||— to the 
" blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits " of the ^' sacri- 
fices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the 
Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have 
remission of pain or guilt,"ir and must, therefore, like the 
brazen serpent, be '' broken in pieces," and the original im- 
bloody altar — the only altar ever known to the Greek 
Church — brought back in its place. 

* Note A^ 19. t Comedy, p. 79. X St. John iii. 14. 

§ 2 Kings xviii. 4. 11 Communion Office. 1 Article xxxi. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 85 

From the altar to the " sacrament of the altar," the tran- 
sition was natural, and accordingly the Professor went on to 
speak of " the manner in which the Lord's Supper had no- 
toriously been administered for centuries " and of " the 
details, often absolutely grotesque, of such celebrations in 
their English communion ;" but was careful not to commit 
himself by specifying even a single instance. — He would 
offset the charge — and an offset was all that was required of 
him by the argument, even if the charge were specific and 
authenticated; for the object of the Comedy was to dispar- 
age the Church of England, as compared with the Church of 
Home — he would offset the charge by the question of Mr. 
Ffoulkes : "Is there or has there been any tale of irrever- 
ence towards it amongst Anglicans, comparable for horrors 
with the history of poisoned chalices and poisoned Hosts 
amongst ourselves formerly, the extent of 'which is made 
patent to this day by the special precaution taken, whenever 
the Pope celebrates mass most solemnly, that no such harm 
may befall him."* 

And now we came to an assertion most extraordinary for 
a History Professor even of Eoman manufacture. " There 
was literally," we were told, '- no example in ecclesiastical 
history, previous to the formation of the English Church, of 
any controversy on the subject of Orders ! " — If the refer- 
ence was to the " formation " eighteen hundred years ago, 
the assertion was extraordinary in its simplicity ; if to the 
reformation three hundred years ago, it was extraordinary 
in its boldness, made, as it was, in the face of the historical 
fact, of which Mr. Ffoulkes (who, if not a Professor, was — 
what was better — a Possessor of History) could inform him, 
that " the Greek Church, as distinguished, however, from 
that of Eussia, invariably reordained, and even rebaptized 
any — though they might have received all their orders im- 
mediately from the Pope — who came over to it from the 
West."t But perhaps the Professor meant to quibble on 
* See Note H, 32, 33. t See Note H, 25. 



86 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

the word " controversy ;" the Greek Church did not '' con- 
trovert " Roman Orders ; it only denied them ! 

Next we came to the " candid admissions " of the validity 
of Anglican Orders by " several distinguished Romanists." 
They were altogether too candid to suit the Professor. 
" There was Courayer, who wanted to vex the community 
from which he was already falling away, and who at last 
died an infidel." Of course, his book was of no account, for 
was not the very writing of such a book a " falling away " 
from his " community ? " And then that he should have 
thought to '' vex " them ! Why ! was not their position 
towards the Anglican claim one of serene indifference or 
even of contempt ? Did not De Maistre say that " to know 
that the Anglican religion was false, there was no need 
either of researches, or of argument ? that it was judged by 
intuition? that it was false as the sun was luminous? 
that you had only to look at it ? that the Anglican hierarchy 
was isolated in Christendom^ and that no sensible reply 
could be made to this last observation ? "^ — The truth was 
Father Courayer Icnew his men ; he knew that under this 
affectation of nonchalance there was an uneasy irritability ; 
that the Anglican hierarchy was a thorn in their side ; and 
that they would give half the patrimony of S. Peter, and 
mortgage the other half, to be able to satisfy reasoning men 
that the Anglican claim to continuity of Orders was ground- 
less. Hinc ilia mxatio. It was very wrong in the young 
cub, thus to vex the tiger ; for " brother brindle "t never 
vexed the cubs — if they were of the right stripe. 

But Courayer was not the only vexing cub. There was 
Dr. Lingard, the historian. Of course, he was " falling 
away," too ? No, he lived and died in the Roman Com- 
munion. Some other way, then, must be found*of disposing 
of him. So, we were told that he " had been cited as admit- 
ting, with more or less hesitation, the purely historical side 
of the question of Parker's consecration." — No honest man 

* See Note A, 82. t Coleridge, Sancti Dominici Pallium. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 87 

ever cited Mm in that way. It took a Professor of Roman 
manufacture to do that. The words of Lingard were :* 
" The facts that are really known are the following. * * 
Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkins, suffragan of Bed- 
ford, confirmed the election on the 9th (of December, 1559), 
and consecrated Parker on the 17th. * * * Qf this con- 
secration on the lltJi of December^ there can le no doubty-\ — 
Yerily, a Professor of History, who could call this a " half- 
admission," " with more or less hesitation," ought to be 
ashamed to hold up his head in decent society. — So diamet- 
rically opposite to the Professor's representation of it, and 
so convincing withal, to a fair-minded member even of the 
Eoman communion, was the narrative of Lingard, that Mr. 
Ffoulkes did not hesitate to introduce a long citation from 
it with these words : " Now on the fact of Archbishop 
Parker's consecration — and of all beyond him in the series 
there has never been any question at all — I cannot imagine 
there being two opinions. * * * . and who amongst 
ourselves can pretend to have tested it more fully than Dr. 
Lingard ? I quote his results.''^ 

To return to the Professor : 

" He knew that some of his friends professed to see the 
hand of Providence in the fact, that the Council of Trent 
had not expressly condemned their Orders. They were per- 
haps not aware that the Council was within an inch of do- 
ing so, and was only restrained by a most urgent appeal 
from the Spanish ambassador, who represented that the 
condition of English Catholics was already nearly intoler- 
able, and that the superfluous declaration would only irri- 
tate their oppressors, and bring fresh misery upon them. 
This argument wisely prevailed." — So! When ''the early 
Anglican Bishbps," being " in mortal fear of the brutal Tu- 
dor sovereigns," ^' sacrificed their own convictions of truth 

* Vol. vii. pp. 293, 294 : Philadelphia, 1827. 

t See Note H, 21, 22, where will be found the full account from Lingard. 

X See Note H, 20. 



m AFTERPIECE TO THE 

from cowardice," "they were pitiful traitors;" but when 
the Fathers of Trent did precisely the same, they only acted 
" wisely ! " Verily, a Munchausen Professor had need have 
a long, memory — long enough, at least, to reach six pages. 
His didn't reach six lines ; for he went on : " But there 
was to be a new Council next year, and from information 
which had reached him, he had not a shadow of doubt that 
it would not only decide that point, but a good many oth- 
ers ;" and yet he had called such decision, only five lines 
before, " superfluous :" when the decision was attended with 
danger to the adherents of Rome from the " brutal Tudor 
sovereigns," it was "superfluous;" when the danger ceased, 
the superfluousness ceased with it ! He to talk of coward- 
ice ! Called he this backing his friends ? The Trent Fath- 
ers owed him small thanks for such backing. They were 
much more beholden to Waterworth, according to w^hom 
the " declaration," though urged by Pope Pius, was opposed 
on the ground, much more creditable to them, "that it was 
certain that Bishops did not depend on the Pope as regards 
order — that it was doubtful whether they depended on him 
as regards jurisdiction."* 

But he had not done yet with the Munchausen Professor 
(begging Munchausen's pardon) : 

" Even if Parker's ordination could be proved (he had 
already proved it by Courayer, and Lingard, and Ffoulkes, 
all of them of the Roman communion), and Edward's Or- 
dinal cleared of every doubt (he had cleared it), and a mul- 
titude of other questions connected with the subject (which 
existed only in the Professor's invention, and not one of 
which even he thought of enough consequence to be so much 
as named by him) lose their gravity (of which they had none 
to lose), no progress would have been made towards estab- 
lishing the claims of the ^;r^s^?i(^ generation of Bishops and 
clergy. Thei?' case was still worse than that of Elizabeth's 
much afflicted spiritual pastors. The extreme uncertainty 
* See Note H, 18. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 89 

of Baptism during the whole of the Puritan period, to 
speak only of that epoch (an uncertainty that had no exist- 
ence outside the forgetive brain of the Professor, as every 
one familiar with the writings of the Puritans, and es- 
pecially with their manuals of instruction, such as the 
Westminster Assembly's two Catechisms, knew, and as was 
proved by the fact that those of them who came over to the 
New World, soon made Massachusetts too hot for Eoger 
Williams because of his antipgedo-baptist notions, and, a 
hundred years later, to guard against the danger of large 
numbers growing up unbaptized in consequence of the strin- 
gent rule which required, one, at least, of the parents to be 
a communicant, as a condition precedent to the baptism of 
the child, adopted, in place of the rule, the ' half-way cov- 
enant ') ; nay, the positive contempt in which that sacrament 
was held by whole generations of English Protestant di- 
vines, and the utter indifference with which it was adminis- 
tered (not a single instance of which contempt and indiffer- 
ence did the Professor condescend to produce, though if the 
' whole generations ' were but two — and that was the smallest 
plural number — there must have been more than thirty 
thousand such instances, for there were sixteen thousand 
parish priests in England at that time) ; the want of inten- 
tion in hundreds of consecrating Bishops to confer sacerdo- 
tal powers, and in thousands of the clergy to accept them 
(which want, if by ' intention ' was meant public intention, 
as shown by the nature and circumstances of the transaction^ 
was a Munchausenism of the Professor's, and if private, not 
to press the question how he found it out, was predicable, 
for aught he knew, or could know, to the contrary, of any 
one that could be named of all the baptisms from the death 
of John the Evangelist until now — a consequence in which 
the Roman Church was as much concerned as the Anglican) ; 
the alleged fact (alleged by whom ?) tlfat at least one Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury (which one ? not Becket ? not Pole ?) 
was known to have died unbaptized {known to whom ? who 



90 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

saw him unbaptized ?) and the extreme (im) probability that 
many (any) others had been in the same case ; lastly, the out- 
rageous incongruity of pretending to make a Catholic Bish- 
op, as the Ritualists spoke, out of a man who rejected all 
Catholic doctrine, and spent his whole life in reviling it 
(which outrageous incongruity, by the changing of the last 
^Catholic ' into Roman — which was what the Professor meant 
by it — and the keeping of the first ' Catholic ' to its true 
sense — which was what he didii't mean by it — would become 
outright congruity) ; these were grayer subjects of reflection 
to those who affected to derive English Orders from the Ro- 
man fount, than any merely historical difficulties." If that 
was so, if the " historical difficulties " were really less grave 
than these, they could hardly have gravity enough to keep 
them from flying off' to the ''limbo of things lost upon 
earth." 

But he had not yet done with Munchausen : 
" They had first to prove that Parker was really consecra- 
ted ; (Lingard had done it for them ; and if he had not, the 
Professor had saved them the necessity by declaring, as he 
had just now done, that the difficulty of proving it was less 
grave than half a dozen other difficulties which he specified, 
not one of which, as any man of common historical infor- 
mation, and common sense, could see, had any gravity at 
all) ; then to consider whether Barlow had either the tst.11 or 
the power to consecrate him. (Lingard had ' considered ' 
both questions and answered both in the affirmative.) Next 
to account for the fact that all England believed the whole 
thing was a sham (ah ! there the Professor was too hard 
for him, and too hard for Mr. Ffoulkes also*), which Eliza- 
beth's characteristic decree frankly confessed, by trying to 
repair it." (TYvq repairing had reference not to the validity 
of the consecration, but to its legality — two entirely distinct 
things. Some thought the consecration of Bishop Wilmer 
to the See of Alabama, during the war, illegal because it had 

* See Note H, 24, 25. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 91 

not receiTecT the consent of a majority of the Bishops and 
Standing Committees of the Church in tlie United States, 
of which they considered the Diocese of Alabama a part ; 
but they never dreamed of questioning its validity.) " Then 
they must deal with the fact, that all the Keformers (yes, 
all)^ and their immediate successors, were not only ill-affect- 
ed towards the Apostolic Succession, but did every thing 
they could to discredit it, (particularly by putting forth in 
the Preface to the Ordinal, already cited,""'' the ' discrediting ' 
declaration that it was ' evident ' that the three ' Orders ' 
had been handed down uninterruptedly ' from the Apostles' 
time' to their own day, and been 'evermore' had in ' rev- 
erend Estimation,' and that, ' therefore, to the intent that ' 
those ' Orders ' might be ' continued^ and reverently used and 
esteemed^ in the Church of England, no man ' should be 
' suffered^ to execute any of the said Functions, except ' he 
had had 'Episcopal Consecration, or Ordination'; thereby)^ 
clearly proving that they neither attached any importance 
to it, nor imagined that they themselves possessed it. (!) 
They must reconcile their deep hatred of the (Eoman) doc- 
trine of (a bloody) sacrifice with their ordination of a 
priesthood (they did ordain one, then, after all), whose chief 
function it was to offer (the Christian and Catholic) sacrifice 
(of prayers and praises, of alms and oblations, of body, soul, 
and spirit, — a ' reasonable service ' ; not 'cery hard to ' recon- 
cile '). They must explain also why, if Edward's Ordinal 
w^ere valid, Anglicans need have been so anxious to change 
it, a hundred years after it had become too late to do so 
with any possible result. (They would do so with pleasure, 
provided the ' Congregation of Rites,' which might natu- 
rally be supposed to be familiar with the subject, would 
first explain, as coming up first, in the order of time, for 
explanation, why, if Peter''s Ordinal were valid, Romans 
need have been so anxious to change it, and that, too, in 
the vital point of the ' power to offer sacrifice and to cele- 

* P, 82. 



92 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

brate Masses for the quick and dead ' — nine hundred years 
and odd after it had become too late to do so with any 
possible result ; and he would j)iedge himself that the 
Anglican explanation should be as satisfactory as the 
Roman.) They must refute, when they had accomplished 
these preliminary difficulties (what did the Professor mean 
by accomplisliing a difficulty?)^ the really irresistible reasons 
for belie^dng that a yast number of English bishops and 
clergy must have lived and died unbaptizecl, and were 
therefore perfectly incapable either of receiving or giving 
ordination, or any other Christian rite. (He would ' refute ' 
these ' irresistible reasons,' and he would do it by confront- 
ing them with the testimony of Newman, and Manning, and 
Ffoulkes ; * against that testimony they would be of as little 
effect as was that famous ' ii'resistible ' of the Schoolmen, 
when it met an ' immovable.' What was the consequence 
to the irresistible we had never been informed ; but he had 
always understood that the immovable — didn't move.) 
And when they had arranged all these (mathematical) 
points (which had position — and therefore admitted of 
being ' arranged ' — but not magnitude) to their own satis- 
faction, they would have to consider, finally, (so there was 
&Jinis, after all ! he was beginning to think that Munchau- 
sen was going to give us a ' story without an end,') what 
object Providence could have in view in creating w^hole 
generations of ' priests ' (after the order of S. Peter, and S. 
Paul, and S. John,) who neither wished to be (Tridentine 
' priests ') so (called,) nor believed that they were, nor ever 
consciously performed one single act belonging to the 
(Tridentine) sacerdotal office ! " He would take time to 
consider that. It would come up again at the Greek 
Kalends. — To conclude : " If the Archbishop of Canterbury 
were to become a Catholic to-morrow, an event which they 
had no reason to anticipate, he would be welcomed by the 
Roman Church as an English married gentleman, who was 

* See Notes H, 30 ; and 1, 1. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 93 

tired of playing a farce, and had come to save his soul in 
the Christian Church. Such was the fact." — True, for once ! 
And if the Pope of Rome were to become Orthodox to- 
morrow, an event which they had no reason to anticipate, 
(for Ephraim seemed joined to his idols), he would be wel- 
comed by the Greek Church as an Italian bachelor, who was 
tired of playing a Comedy, and had come to receive (in ad- 
dition to the four — five, if he aspired to the priesthood — 
which, in his ignorance, he had thought he had already 
received) the sacrament of Matrimony — a " means of grace " 
which he had hitherto deliberately and wilfully neglected — 
and save his soul in the Christian Church. Such was the 
fact.'^ — The Professor was now done with. 

Yes, I said ; done with, and done for. 

Casula. Dean Blunt is not done for. 

Kayeo, You have passed over Dr. Easy's long speech, 
with Jolly's and Theory's suggestions, and Primitive's 
protest. You were right in passing them over, for there is 
nothing in them. 

Casula. Nothing of argument. 

Kayeo. ISTo, nothing approaching argument. — To pass to 
Dean Blunt : "He thought that no adequate proof had 
ever been given, or could be given, of the integrity of their 
succession. The evidence which centuries had failed to 
complete would never be completed at all." 

The dean didn't give them time enough by half. It took 
eighteen hundred and fifty-four years to "complete" the 
evidence of the Immaculate Conception. That of the 
Supremacy of Peter was not yet " completed." Some thought 
it would be, next December, but he had his doubts about 
it ; it didn't begin till more than half a century after the 
birth of the Blessed Virgin, and it might not therefore be 
completed for half a century to come. The disputed part 
of the Anglican Succession had run as yet but three hundred 
years ; it ought to have at least another three hundred, for 

* See 'KoiQ H, 25, in an. 



94 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

every one knew how much clearer the evidence of a fact 
became, the farther you got from it, either in space, or in 
time. Meanwhile, it would be only neighborly in the Pope 
to do as he had done in the other cases — recognize the Suc- 
cession (not as an Article of Faith, but) as a fact, pending 
the completion of the evidence ! Let this be done, and, his 
word for it, it would be completed to the satisfaction of all, 
in less than half the three hundred years. 

But, said the dean, " it was surely a fatal note against 
their High-Church friends, that they had always been occu- 
pied in vindicating their Orders ; " always, that was, for the 
last three hundred years. Was it a fatal note, then, against 
the Pope, that he had always been occupied in vindicating 
his Supremacy, for more than three hundred years ? If not, 
why not ? 

But there was yet another point that puzzled the dean. 
He could not see how those who called the Roman priest- 
hood "the spawn of Antichrist," and the Roman Church 
" the harlot of Babylon," should be so " anxious " to prove 
an " unbroken connection with Rome.*' It " was as if a man 
should contend proudly for a pedigree derived through 
countless generations of felons." And why not, if the title 
to the inheritance depended on it ? Did not S. Matthew 
"contend" for the pedigree of our Blessed Lord through 
the- incestuous Thamar, and the harlot Rahab ? * But there 
was no need of " contending " for the Roman portion of the 
pedigree : the inheritance came to them in a double line — 
an earlier, and a later ; and certainly the earlier title was 
not the inferior. The succession was derived from S. John, 
through the Church of Gaul, to the old British and Irish 
Churches, of dotJi of which the present United Church of 
England and Ireland, with its offshoots — the Scottish, and 
the American, was the unbrolceii continuation. As on a for- 
mer, and memorable, occasion, that " other disciple did 
outrun Peter, and came first to " t those islands : but Peter 
* Gen. xxviii. 12-26 ; Josh. ii. ; S. Matt. i. 3, 5 : t S. John xx. 4. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 95 

followed afar off ; and being older, and therefore more infirm 
of muscle and wind, was five hundred years in coming up 
with him. And when, seventeen hundred years later, the 
inheritance in Us fulness was to be " transmitted to another 
country speaking the same language — descendants, in short, 
of the mother country," again that other disciple did out- 
run Peter ; and again Peter followed afar off, and he had 
ever since been " sitting with the servants " — all honor to 
him for that — " to see the end.'"^ But the servants them- 
selves were deserting him, at the rate of two hundred 
thousand a year, the Universe said, ^' of the 'best Catholic stock 
that ever received Ijajptismy t That last remark was true, 
every word of it. The Irish race was a religious race, pene- 
trated and permeated with faith in the unseen ; it had never 
yet been sceptical, and he had no fear that it ever would be. 
But Patrick was beginning to think for himself, and the first 
thought that occurred to him was that the money he paid 
his priest ought to bring him something more in return 
than the merest rudiments of an education (if even that) in 
this world, and a " good hope through grace " of getting 
into purgatory in the next, where, for want of money left 
behind him to pay the priest for praying him out, — the 
priest having got all his money before, — he must remain till 
he paid the uttermost farthing; and when, poor fellow, 
would that be ? — He could not help thinking that if those 
who had the rule over him could educate Protestants in the 
higher branches at a low rate, in the hope of converting one 
in ten, or one in a hundred, they might at least give as 
good an education to their own flesh and blood. He had a 
laudable desire to rise in the social scale ; or, at least, that 
his children might rise ; and he saw that, to that, a good 
education was a condition precedent ; and when he saw fur- 
ther, as he was beginning to do, — and disestablishment, by 
removing one cause of prejudice, would quicken the process, 
— how he had been imposed on by a spurious catholicity ; 

* S. Matt. xxvi. 58. t See Note C. 



96 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

that the Anglo-Irish Succession had come straight down 
from S. Patrick through Hugh Curwin, Archbishop of Dub- 
lin ; * and that that other Succession, which had enslaved 
him, and eaten out his substance, was a modern schismatical 
intrusion ; he would come back to the old Church of S. 
Patrick — "the home of the saints and martyrs," and wonder 
how he had ever been inveigled from it. 

Gasula. There is no cause for wonder. It was the 
" scurvy sauce " he was " served " by the English Govern- 
ment, and which he naturally connected with the new order 
of things, that brought him back to us. 

Kayeo. He was served as scurvy sauce under Henry YI., 
and a good deal scurvier under Edward lY.t But let that 
pass. To return to O'Kaye : — The HibernicorRoman Suc- 
cession was not the only modern schismatical intrusion : the 
Anglo-Roman was another, equally schismatical, and more 
modern, as Archbishop Manning, and the very title and date 
of his Archiepiscopal See, could testify. Why, it was born, 
as it were but the other day, and had not yet come of age. — 
I suggested that it spoke for itself. — Yes ! to its shame. It 
was begotten in cowardice, conceived in iniquity, brought 
forth in sin, and christened in schism. Why didn't the 
Archbishop claim the old title ? Was he "in mortal fear of 
the brutal Tudor sovereigns ? ". What said the Munchausen 
Professor to that ? He to talk of cowardice ! And where 
was Pius lY. during the first seven years of Queen Eliza- 
beth's reign ? and Pius Y. during the next three ? 

Gasula. Trying to correct the queen and get the people 
back to their old moorings. 

Kayeo. Yes ! and when, in spite of all the purringj of 
"brother brindle," she would not be converted. Presto 
change ! " Then began Peter to curse and to swear." And 
what did he gain by it ? Curses^ like cMckens^ the old prov- 

* See Note H, 23. t See Note K. 

X '' Dearest daughter in Christ," was the beginning of the letter already 
referred to. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 97 

erb said, came home to roost^ and his came home with a ven- 
geance.* England had never forgotten that cursing, and 
never would forget it while she was England. The Catholic 
World, in its article on Protestantism a Failure,^ had said : 
" Admitting that there " (viz., in the " central see ") " was 
the Catholic Church, the only question to be settled was, 
Which was that see ? Reduced to that point, the contro- 
versy was virtually ended. There was and never had been 
but one claimant, Rome had already claimed it, and no- 
body in the world pretended or ever had pretended that it 
was any other." — To apply that argument to the case in 
hand. Which was the Church of England at the time that 
Pius V, was letting loose that wild Irish bull of his ; or 
rather, cross between Roman and Irish ; like English bulls, 
too, and American bulls, in this, that a scarlet rag was all 
that was wanting to set it off fiill tilt, but unlike them in 
that it ran from the rag, not toward it ? The question an- 
swered itself. There was and never had teen during all those 
ten years hut one claimant — the Church presided over by 
Parker, and which had come down to our day in an unbrok 
en succession of Bishops oMd Sees. Either that was the 
Church of England, or there was no Church of England 
during those ten years. Would Pius lY. say that ? What 
sort of a shepherd was he, then, during those last seven 
years of his Pontificate, to leave those poor sheep of his, 
all that while, to the English wolf ? Not the good shep- 
herd ; for " the good shepherd giveth his life f^r the sheep. 
But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own 

* '' ' We know,' said Urban VITI. to Cardinal Borgia, ' that we may de- 
clare Protestants excommunicate, as Pius V. declared Queen Elizabeth, 
and before him Clement YII. the King of England * * * Henry VIII., 
but with what success ? The whole world can tell : we yet bewail it in tears 
of blood. Wisdom doth not teach us to imitate Pius V. or Clement Vn. 
* * * ' ''— Ffoulkes, C. Z>., Part i. p. 230, where it is cited as, " Quoted 
by Mr. Simpson in B}). UUathorne and the Rambler (Williams & Norgate, 
London, 1862), near the end. (From a contemporary Report preserved in 
the State Paper Office, Charles I., Italy, Bundle 24)/' | 

t Jan., 1869. p. 515. 
5 



y» AFTERPIECE TO THE 

the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leayeth the 
sheep, and fleeth ; and the wolf catcheth them, and scatter- 
eth the sheep." What said the Munchausen Professor to 
that? He to talk of cowardice! Poor Pius I Shut up 
within his patriarchate — that "pent up Utica" of a "whole 
boundless Continent " — by " the brutal Tudor sovereigns," 
and "pestered in that pinfold" by those pre-dogmatite 
heretics, the Dominicans — pestered into it by the one, and 
pestered in it by the other — what could he do but leave the 
Anglo-Roman hierarchy in abeyance, and the Franciscan 
dogma in expectance ? Another Pius, the Mnth of that 
name, born in a happier age, and under more favorable aus- 
pices, would quail the impious. 

Viderat inmensam tenebroso in carcere lucem, 
Terribilesque Deos scelenim, Mariamque futuram. 

The fulfilment did not equal the expectation. The Dogma 
had been proclaimed : the rest was still in abeyance. A 
hierarchy had, indeed, been established, but not the hierar- 
chy, as the very names of the new sees, Westminster, Bir- 
mingham, &c., testified : the Bishop and the Archbishop 
had a succession ; but the sees were Brummagem — the arch- 
bishop's as well as the bishop's. For nearly three hundred 
years, a straggling " bishop in partibiLS,'^'' here and there, 
had sufiSced; separate, solitary links. Now, at length, we 
had a chain,''' a catenation, but not a concatenation ; at any 
rate, not a " concatenation accordingly.''^ — The see of Can- 
terbury was a historical fact ; it had been in existence more 
than twelve hundred years. If a former Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople had never heardt of it, so much the worse for 
that functionary! The Patriarch of Rome, he rather 
thought, had heard of it. It was in existence after the 
death of "Bloody Mary," for its Roman occupant sur- 
vived his Royal Mistress several hours. It had never been 
extinguished by Church or by State, by Pope or by Parlia- 
* See Note I, 2. t Comedy, p. 65. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 99 

ment ; it was therefore still in existence. Who, then, was 
the rightful occupant ? Reduced to that pointy the controversy 
was mrtually ended. There was hut one claimant^ and nobody 
'pretended that there was any other. If this argument of the 
Catholic World was good for the See of Kome, it was equally- 
good for the Sedens of Canterbury. 

Gasula. I don't think much of that argument of the 
Catholic World^s any way. 

Kayeo. The argument is well enough ; it is the premises 
that are mistaken, as O'Kaye remarked at the time. The 
mistake, he said, grew out of a misapprehension of the 
"branch theory," which was, after all, a very simple theory 
— too simple, it seemed, for the Comedy or the Catholic 
World., to comprehend. The word " branch," according to 
the latest edition of Webster., had six meanings : 

" 1. (Bot.) A shoot of a tree or other plant ; a limb ; a 
bough growing from a stem, or from another branch or 
bough. 

" 2. Any arm or part shooting or extended from the main 
body of a thing, as a smaller stream running into a larger 
one, or proceeding from it ; a ramification. ' Most of the 
branches or streams were dried up.' — W. Irving. 

"- 3. Any member or part of a body or system ; a distinct 
article ; a section or subdivision : a department, as of sci- 
ence. ''Branches of knowledge.' — Prescott. 

"4. Aline of family descent, in distinction from some 
other line or lines from the same stock ; any descendant in 
such a line ; as the English or the Irish branch of a family. 
' His father, a younger branch of the ancient stock.' — CarewP 

The other two were merely technical. 

Worcester gave five meanings : 

"1. The shoot or bough of a tree; a limb. 

" 2. The offshoot of anything, as of a stag's horn, a can- 
dlestick, a river, a family, &c. 

'' 3. Any distinct article or portion ; a section ; a subdi- 
vision. 'The several branches of justice and charity.' — Til- 
lotson.'''' 



100 AFTERPIECE TO THE . 

The other two were technicaV. 

Leaving out the first and the third meanings, as inappli- 
cable to the subject, he would call my attention to the sec- 
ond of Worcester^ which was divided into two — the second 
and the fourth — in Webster, The division was well founded, 
for the meanings were entirely distinct, the first of them 
being literal, the second figurative. There were two classes 
of literal meanings, the original and the transferred. These 
were specified as such in the Latin-English Dictionary of An- 
drews, founded on the Latin- German one of Freund. Under 
the word " ramus " would be found, first, the original " lit- 
eral " meaning, A branch, bough, twig; then the " transferred " 
literal meaning, A branch of a stag's antlers, A branch of a 
mountain chain, (&c. ; and, finally, the tropical meaning, A 
branch of consanguinity. The second of these meanings was 
as literal as the first ; the branch of a stag's antler was as 
literally a branch as the branch of a tree ; as a consequence, 
the unity of the trunk and its branches was visible in the 
same way in the one as in the other — visible, namely, to the 
bodily eye : you could see where the branch joined on to 
the trunk. On the other hand, the unity of a family, a na- 
tion, a race — the joining on of the branches to the parent 
. trunk — was visible to the mental, not to the bodily, eye, be- 
cause the branches were figurative, not literal, branches. 
Now the unity under consideration was of this latter kind. 
The Church was one as the Eace was one : you got at its 
unity as you got at the unity of the race — by tracing it back 
to its source. The French Church, the English Church, the 
Kussian Church, branched off from the Second Adam, pre- 
cisely as the French people, the English people, the Russian 
people, branched off from the First Adam ; to wit, by indi- 
vidual births — in the one case, " of the flesh," — in the other, 
" of water and the Holy Ghost :" and the birth was as real, 
and the relationship as real, in the latter case as in the for- 
mer. — Thus, then, by the simple stating of the branch theory, 
he disposed of the whole argument of the Comedy and of 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 101 

the Catholic World, That argument was valid only against 
a theory of their own and Dr. Ewer's imagining — the antler 
theory, as it might fitly be termed. They had undoubt- 
edly brought that stag to bay, and the whole Boman hier- 
archy, with the laity at their back,* were in at the death. 
They were welcome to their enjoyment. Tray, Blanche, and 
Sweetheart might give their lungs full play, till they found 
out their mistake, or barked themselves hoarse, whichever 
first happened. 

The ingenuous Doctor (Candour) supposed an advocate of 
the branch theory setting out on a foreign tour, and asked 
"Did he leave Dover an Anglican, and disembark at Calais 
a Roman Catholic ?" He might as well have asked. Did he 
leave Dover an Englishman, and disembark at Calais a 
Frenchman ? There was as much sense in the one question 
as in the other. — Then, toe, his supposition that members of 
the same family must necessarily feel alike, think alike, 
speak alike, was decidedly ingenuous ; as if brothers never 
quarrelled ; as if the older ones, or those who pretended to 
be the older, never sought to domineer over the younger ! 
And, again, that magnifying of itself by one of the collateral 
branches, into the trunk from which all the rest originated 
— "French," "Spanish," "Austrian," " doubtless, in a very 
real sense, ' branches ' of the Roman trunk ;" — and if one de- 
murred to that, " This was the way in which the branch 
spoke to the trunk ! " 

Upon what meat had this our Caesar fed, 
That he had grown so big ? 

He might as well imagine all mankind descended from 
Cain, and the oldest male descendant in the direct line from 
that first fratricide, universal monarch : it would be a fit 
pendant to the hallucination which imagined the (alleged) 
oldest male descendant in the direct line from S. Peter uni- 
versal bishop, and his church the universal church ! — The 

*" PeopZe'5 Edition. Price 2^ Cents ! ''^ 



103 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

Catholic World, in the article before referred to,* made the 
very boldness of the claim the proof of its justness. "No 
Protestant sect," it said, " has ever had the audacity to 
claim tp be itself alone the visible Catholic Church of the 
Creed." For once, the Catholic World was right. It was 
reserved to the Papal sect (for just so far forth as it was 
Papal, it was but a sect, and at least a century and three- 
quarters younger than the ISTestorian) to mount to that sub- 
limity of impudence. Brass was the current coin of Rome in 
the olden time, and brass was evidently still current there. 
Indeed, so flush were they of it, that it could hardly be all 
their own : a part of it must be ces alienum. They w^ere 
" trading on borrowed capital," and such, General Jackson 
said, " ought to break." — The Catholic World^ in its criticism 
on Dr. Ewer's " illustration of the Catholic Church,"t of- 
fered us brass for sterling coin. Me (O'Kaye) would decline 
it, as ancient Pistol declined the supposed brass of his 
French captive, and in language as emphatic though not 
quite so highly seasoned with Triclentine expletives. Dr. 
Ewer had compared the Catholic Church " to a tree," its 
trunk " one and entire " for the first eight feet above the 
ground (each foot representing a century), but " somewhere 
along the ninth foot " branching into " two main limbs," the 
" Greek " and the " Latin ;" the latter branching again, "six 
feet further out," into two, the " Anglican " and the " Ro- 
man." The comparison was a lame one, as he would pres- 
ently show ; his first business was with the Catholic World'' s 
criticism of it : " Then there is no present living trunk, but 
branches only. Branches of a trunk that has ceased to live 
can be only dead branches." Would the critic be so good 
as to explain how" the first eight feej: of the trunk would 
keep on living if the trunk kept on shooting up as one 
trunk into the sixteenth foot and thence into the nineteenth 
but would cease to live if " somewhere along the ninth foot" 
it began to shoot into two main limbs ? What sort of a 

*P. 506. tP. 513. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 103 

tree was that which by the very act of putting fortli branch- 
es killed the trunk? Was it not the nature of a tree to put 
forth branches ? And what sort of a tree was it which 
grew up for eight hundred years — and that was Dr. Ewer's 
tree — all trunk and no limb ? What would S. xiugustine 
have thought of a comparison which should have likened 
the Church of his day to the trunk of a tree four feet high 
wdth never a bough or a branch ? Would he not have 
opened his eyes wide at the " illustration V And if, by way 
of making it clearer, it should have been added that when the 
trunk got twice as old and twice as high, it would part into 
two limbs, one like the trunk, and the other not a little un- 
like it, would he not have opened his eyes loider f And would 
he not have said to himself. What sort of looking tree will it 
be in the tenth century, with a trunk eight or nine feet high, 
and two limbs one foot in length each ? — So much for the 
antler theory — the theory that took the term " branch " in 
the transferred literal, ir^tead of in the figurative meaning. 
But the Catliolic World had another theory. Dr. Ewer 
had declared that the church was an ^' organism." Now, 
" an organism," said the Worlds "is a living body;" and 
"in every living body or organism, there is and must be — 
as the older physiologists, and even the most recent and 
eminent * * * have proved — an original, central cell, 
from which the whole organism proceeds, in which its vital 
principle inheres, and which is the type, creator, originator, 
and director of all its vital phenomena. * * * This 
primitive cell or germ is never spontaneously generated, but 
is always generated by a living organism which precedes 
and deposits it according to the old maxim, omne vivum ex 
{>??(?."* Suppose we granted all this, and — what was quite 
another matter — granted its applicability to the case in hand, 
where was this central cell to be found ? In " the Chair of 
Peter," said the Catholic World. '' This organic central cell 
produces not many organisms, but one only. So the chair 

* P. 508. 



104 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

of Peter, the central cell of the church organism, can gene- 
erate only one organism. Christ has one body and no 
more."* Yery true : and therefore there could be but one 
original, organic, central cell. Now the Church was the 
the body of Christ, as Mankind was the body of Adam. 
The original central cell of the church organism was there- 
fore in the Second Adam, as the original central cell of the 
race organism was in the First Adam. The former was no 
more in Peter than the latter was in Cain. Still less was it 
in the chair of Peter, that was, the perpetuated office of 
Peter, — perpetuated, namely (for, said the Catholic World, 
the Apostolic See cannot be separated from the Sedensf), 
in the persons of his successors ; for an original central cell 
in a succession perpetuated by derivation was an absurdity. 
The derivative central cells were not one, but many, and (to 
borrow an expression from mathematics) of many orders. 
The derivative central cells of the first order were — in the race 
organism — in Cain, Abel, Seth, an<l the other sons begotten 
of Adam — in the church organism — in Peter, and James 
and John, and the rest of the Apostles. James and John 
were derivatives of the same order as Peter, and therefore 
could no more be derived from him, than Abel and Seth, 
who were derivatives of the same order as Cain, could be 
derived from him. The original central cell in any organ- 
ism must necessarily be in the originator, not in the origin- 
ated — in tlie source, not in the stream. 

But, said the Catholic World^ the unity in question was a 
"visible unity." True. And the centre of unity must 
therefore be a " visible centre." True again. But how vis- 
ible ? Not to the bodily, but to the mental eye ; and to 
that, the Second Adam was as visible a centre of the visible 
unity of the Church, as the First Adam was of the visible 
unity of the race ; as visible a centre of unity as the Chair 
of Peter, in its continuity, could possibly be ; nay, as visible 
a centre of unity as the present Pope himself if, on the prin- 

* P. 512. t p. 517. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 105 

ciple that the See cannot be separated from the Sedens, you 
took him as that centre. You might go to Rome, no doubt, 
and see the Pope with the bodily eye ; but you would see 
him as the centre of unity ^ only with the mind's eye, if you 
saw him at all as such centre. As far as visibility as a cen- 
tre of unity was concerned, the Sedens and the See in its 
continuity from the beginning were in precisely the same 
category ; you could no more see the one with the bodily 
eye than the other, and either than Him from whom they 
both derived, and who was himself the only Visible Centre, 
because the only Centre at all, of the visible unity of His 
Church. So with the visibility of that unity itself: it was 
solely a mental visibility. You could not see with the 
bodily eye the unity even of a family — father, mother, and 
half a dozen or a dozen children. Sometimes they looked as 
though they belonged together ; sometimes as though they 
belonged apart. He had more than once, or twice, or a 
dozen times, seen two sisters looking as unlike to the bodily, 
as Rome and Canterbury to the mental, eye : according to 
the reasoning of the Comedy^ and the Catholic World, they 
were not sisters. Again, he had seen two w^ho were not sis- 
ters looking " as like as two peas." Looks were proverbi- 
ally deceitful ; yet they were all that the bodily eye could 
take cognizance of 

But there was another difficulty in the way of the recep- 
tion of the Catholic World^s theory. The See of Peter was 
the visible centre of unity, and the See could not be sepa- 
rated from the Sedens. Where, then, was the visibility of 
that unity when there were rival Popes at Rome and at 
Avignon ? And, in particular, where was that visibility at 
the opening of the fifteenth century with its three rival 
Popes, Gregory XH., Benedict XIH., and Alexander Y., all 
of whom the Council of Constance afterwards deposed, to 
put Martin Y. in their place ?* Were there three centres of 
unity at that time ? If not, which was the centre ? " Greg- 

* See Note H, 4-7. 
5* 



106 AFTEEPIECE TO THE 

ory XII.," said the Catholic World, "We recognize the 
Council of Constance as a General Council only after it was 
convoked by Gregory XII., who was, in our judgment, the 
true Bishop of the Apostolic See, and hold legal only the 
acts confirmed by Martin Y." But what was " our judg- 
ment " good for ? Was the CatJiolic World infallible as well 
as the Catholic Church ? What right had " we " to form a 
judgment on such a point? Queer yisible centre that, 
whose very position rested on the "judgment " not of the 
Catholic Church, but of the Gailiolic World! The centre of 
Omnipresence, according to the schoolmen, was everywhere ; 
its circumference nowhere : but here we had a unity whose 
circumference was everywhere, and its centre nowhere. 
Then, again, that confirmation by Martin Y., which legal- 
ized the acts of the Council, one of which " acts " was the 
election of the said Martin ! Milner, in his letter to Elring- 
ton, given by Kenrick in his Appendix,* made himself 
"merry" over what he thought a very "merry subject : " 
" Barlow ^''^ he said, " confirmed " (the election of) Parker,, and 
eight days afterwards, Parher confirmed Barlow ; that is to 
say, the father begat the son, and the son begat the fath- 
er ! " But here^ the son begat himself ! Which of the two 
was the merrier ? 

There was another point that needed explanation. " The 
organic centre," we were told, " from which the whole or- 
ganism is evolved and directed has remained at Kome ever 

* Invalidity, &c., p. 302.— It 1;? not uncommon, when a legislative body- 
meets for organization after a general election, for the oldest member elect 
to swear in the others, and then for one of them to swear him in. There 
is nothing preposterous in this, for neither derives the power to do it from 
the other, but both derive it from the State. Had the Queen in Parliament 
undertaken to suspend the operation of the law which required the con- 
tirming bishops to have been themselves ''confirmed," there would have 
been nothing irregular in the proceeding. The irregularity consisted in 
the Queen's undertaking to do it by herself. As, how^ever, the Parliament 
afterwards ratified what she had done, and as it was a question, not of or- 
ders, but solely of jurisdiction according to the laws of the realm^ there 
could be no question of the right of jurisdiction after the justification by 
the Parliament. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 107 

since Peter transferred thither his chair from Antioch."'^' If 
so, then Clement Y., John XII., Benedict XII., Clement YI., 
Urban Y., and Gregory XI., who were Popes during the 
seventy years captivity at Avignon, L'emjpia Babilonia^ as 
Petrarch called it, from 1305 to 1376, must have had the 
power to sit in the chair at Rome, and le all the while in 
Avignon, five hundred miles off ! Such being the case with 
them, was it so certain, after all, that Peter ever did trans- 
fer that chair of his from Antioch ? Surely, his power was 
not less than that of his successors. Might he not have left 
his chair behind him, and have been at Rome, and been sit- 
ting in his chair all the while, nevertheless ? 

There was yet another difficulty. Where was the visible 
centre of unity during those eleven years from 1378 to 
1389? Andy where was the unity itself? Which was at 
that time the Catholic Church — the greater part of the Em- 
pire, Bohemia, Hungary, and England, adhering to Boni- 
face IX. at Rome, or, France, Spain, Scotland, Sicily, and 
Cyprus, adhering to Benedict XIII. at Avignon? Who 
could tell ? 

The mistake of the Catholic World was in confounding an 
organism with an administrative organization. The two 
things were entirely distinct. The English people was an 
organism ; the Scottish people was another organism ; but 
they constituted but one administrative organization. The 
Jewish people "was but one organism, but they formed part 
of many, and diverse, administrative organizations. Now 
an organism necessarily supposed an original, but not neces- 
sarily a contemporary, head. An administrative organiza- 
tion necessarily supposed a contemporary head, but the or- 
ganization was not necessarily general ; it might be partic- 
ular, local, national. The Church was no more one admin- 
istrative organization than the Race. The ^' laws of na- 
tions " were real laws, though administered by no common 
tribunal, but by the several tribunals of the several nations, 

*P. 517. 



108 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

each recognizing the decisions of the others, as might be 
seen in any collection of Admiralty Keports. These laws 
became such by general consent, and, having thus become 
such, could be rescinded only by the same general consent. 
Thus the United States, one of the youngest in the family 
of nations, refused to consent to the abolition of privateer- 
ing, and privateering was therefore still a part of the code 
of nations. So with the Church. The canons enacted even 
by General Councils, became binding, not by such enact- 
ment, but by the free consent (not, as the Catholic World 
alleged, of the Pope, but) of the Church diffused, and by 
such consent alone could they be repealed. Nor was there 
need of any central organization to administer them, any 
more than in the case of the laws of nations : the several 
particular or national organizations were ample for every 
legitimate purpose of doctrine or discipline. 

But what was the " Church diffused," and how were we 
to get at the ^^ quod db omnibus'''' of S. Vincent? Who, ask- 
ed the Catholic World, were the omnes, and how were we 
to know them except as being in communion with the Cen- 
tral See ? The question was easily answered. Every mem- 
ber of the one organism, holding communion with it through 
some particular administrative organization legitimately 
constituted, was one of the '''\omnes " ; every one not a mem- 
ber of the one organism, in other words, not baptized, and 
every member of the one organism, not holding communion 
with it through some particular administrative organization 
legitimately constituted, was not one of the *' omnes^ To 
the legitimate constitution of an administrative organiza- 
tion the ministry was requisite. This ministry, as a constit- 
uent of the organism, was divine ; as a constituent of the 
administrative organization, it was partly divine partly hu- 
man. Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in uninterrupted suc- 
cession from Christ Himself were alone of the essence of 
that ministry : archdeacons, archpriests, archbishops, metro- 
politans, exarchs, patriarchs, were of its accidents, — a merely 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 109 

human arrangement, and as such might at anytime be done 
away with by the competent authority. He was aware that 
there were those who maintained that only one order, in 
unbroken succession, was of the essence of the ministry, and 
others who denied the essentiality of the succession. He 
was not arguing these points : he was simply answering the 
question of the Catholic World^ how, on the high Anglican 
theory, the " quod ah omnibus -' of S. Vincent* Vas got at ; 
and it was, as he had said, and had shown, a question easily 
answered. But the answer did not suit the Catholic World, 
It was " the theory of the schismatic Greeks," and that was 
'' simply the theory of independency, as much so as that of 
the New England Congregationalists." Well, and what was 
the mistake of the New England Congregationalists so far 
as the purely human side of the administrative organization 
was concerned ? Simply the turning of each particular 
congregation into a national church ; which was as if they 
should have turned each of the three hundred and fifty 
towns of Massachusetts into a nation, and made the State 
but the complex of these towns, without any common ad- 
ministrative authority. The Roman organization, on the 
other hand, sorted with that gathering of mankind into a 
Universal Empire, which was the dream of Pagan Rome, 
and, before her, of Babylon, of Medo-Persia, of Macedon, 
but which was not the ordinance of " the Most High," when 
He ^'divided to the nations their inheritance," when He 
'^ separated the sons of Adam,"t when He " determined the 
bounds of their habitation,"! what time, on the plain of 
Shinar, they thought to build themselves " a city and a 
tower," and to make themselves " a name," and to continue 
forever " of one language, and of one speech. "§ New Eng- 
land went to one extreme ; Rome went to the other. The 

* The Saint's way af getting at the Faith, viz. : by taking that which had 
been held alw.ays, everywhere, by all, — quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab 
omnibus — stood in the way of the New Dogma, and of a good many old 
dogmas, full three hundred years old, and must therefore be got rid of. 

t Deut. xxxii. 8. % Acts xvii. 26. § Gen. xi. 1-4. 



110 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Greek and Anglican Churches held fast that golden .mean, 
the constitution of the church in the Apostolic age, before 
it had been developed first into imperialism under Constan- 
tine, and then into the Papacy,* — that constitution which 
Mr. Ffoulkes " sincerely believed " to be " the loftiest and 
most evangelical idea of a church by far," and, " to a cer- 
tain extent," " actually exhibited in the Church of the 
Fathers — at least of the first three centuries ; " thovigh he 
" greatly doubted " whether it was not " a church more fit 
for the cloister, and one to which the world would never 
have been drawn or belonged."t But enough of the Cath- 
olic World. 

Gasula. Enough, indeed. I was beginning to think he 
would never get back to the Comedy. 

Kayeo. No fear of that ! though if he had not, he would 
not have left much of it unanswered. There were but three 
points, he said, that remained to be noticed : '' sacramental 
absolution," " reverence to the blessed' sacrament," and 
" clerical celibacy." He would take up each in turn. 

" How," asked Dean Critical, " could he (the Dean) teach 
with a grave face that sacramental absolution was the ordi- 
nary instrument for the remission of sin, when he knew that 
his own church had utterly neglected to employ this mighty 
instrument during three centuries, J (which she could hardly 
have done if she had been conscious of possessing it), and 
that he himself was quite ready to give communion to peo- 

* That development itself is an argument of the strongest kind against 
the Congregational theory. In the original constitution of the Church 
there were "Romanizing Germs " in the same sense (and in no other) as 
there was, in the "noble vine, wholly a right seed" (Jer. ii. 21), the 
"germ" of " the degenerate plant of a strange vine." And so of its doc- 
trines. He who could develop Congregationalism pure and simple into 
the Papacy, the doctrine of the Westminister Assembly's Catechism that 
the souls of the righteous, at their death, " do immediately pass into 
glory," into "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory," and the 
' Zuinglian doctrine of the Eucharist into Transubstantiation, could in the 
same way develop a bee-moth into a behemoth, or even a horse chestnut 
nto a chestnut horse, 
t See Note H, 1-3. , t See Note I, 4. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION, 111 

pie who never had received, and never intended to ask for, 
such absolution?" Now, whatever the Dean might be 
" quite ready " to do—and, judging froin his part in both 
Scenes of the Comedy^ he was " quite ready " to do any and 
everything which his Koman friends asked of him — it was 
" quite " certain, nevertheless, that he had never in a single 
instance, unless he had wilfully and deliberately violated 
his ordination vows, given the communion without having 
first given sacramental absolution, and in a form modelled 
on that of the Blessing given to Aaron and his sons to bless 
the children of Israel withal — the only kind of form known 
in the Church for the first one thousand years and upwards 
— the only kind now known in the Greek Church : — "Speak 
unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall 
bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord 
bless thee, and keep thee : The Lord make his face shine 
upon thee, and be gracious unto thee : The Lord lift up his 
countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they 
shall put my name upon the children of Israel ; and I will 
bless them ;"* — and on the salutation of peace, given by our 
Lord to the seventy disciples : — '^ And into whatsoever 
house ye enter, first say. Peace be to this house. And if the 
son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it : if not, 
it shall turn to you again ;"t — a kind of form as effective 
for absolution as for salutation or benediction ; the " son 
of" forgiveness received forgiveness through it, and none 
other. The absolution was ministerial, not judicial. Even 
the form, " I absolve thee," &c., which the English Reform- 
ers retained in the OiSce for the Visitation of the Sick, was 
used only in the Western Church, and was comparatively 
modern even in that. He challenged the Critical Dean, or 
the Professor of History, or any other Dean, or any other 
Professor, to produce an instance of its use for the first one 
thousand years. If any one knew of any, " let him now 
speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace." He had 
* Num. vi. 23-27. t St. Luke x. 5, 6. 



112 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

said that only the son of forgiveness received forgiveness, 
and the son of forgiveness was necessarily a son of repen- 
tance. Hence the absolution was preceded by confession ; 
but the confession was to Almighty God. There were, in- 
deed, exceptional cases for which private confession was 
provided, but they were expected to be rare. They were 
rare in the early church ; so rare, that for the first two cen- 
turies there was no special provision for them. And when, 
in the middle of the third century, it was thought desirable 
that those cases should be given in charge to persons spe- 
cially qualified to be ghostly advisers — " penitentiary pres 
byters," as they were termed, but bearing only a very remote 
resemblance to the modern '' confessor," since they gave no 
private absolution — only one was appointed to a diocese ;* 
and even this arrangement continued only a century and a 
half; it was done away with by Kectarius,t A.D. 391. St. 
Chrysostom, the successor of JSTectarius in the See of Con- 
stantinople, bade his flock confess to the Chief Shepherd. 
" I do not bring you," he said, '' before your fellow servants, 
neither do I compel you to unveil your sins to men : unfold 
your conscience before God and show Him your wounds, 
and from Him seek healing."! And said S. Augustine, 
" What have I to do with men, that they should hear my 
confessions, as if they could heal my disorders."§ Compul- 
sory auricular confession was a modern invention ; it dated 
back only to the Fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215. 

So much for the first of the three points. 

The next was '^ reverence for the blessed sacrament." 
This was shown, according to the Dean, in ^' lodging " the 

* Socr., H. E., V. 19. t Sozom., H. E., vii. 16. 

J Ov6£ yap elg Oearpov Ge aycj tgjv (jvvSovXov tcjv go)v^ ov6e 
EKKaXvipac toIq avOpuiroig avajKa^u rd afiaprrj^ara to avvec Sbg 
avdnrv^ov ejUTrpoadev rov deov kol avrC) del^ov rd rpavfiara^ not 
nap avTG) rd (pdpfiaKa alrrjaov.—De Incomprehens. Dei Nat., Horn, v., 
§ 7. See also In Heb. c. xii. Horn. xxxi. ; In Psal. li. Horn. ii. ; De Lazaro., 
Ham. iv. St. Basil, in Ps. xxxvii. 8. 

§ " Quid mihi ergo est cum hominibus, ut audiant confessiones meas. 
quasi ipsi sanaturi sint omnes languores meos ? ^'—Confess. 1. x. c. 3. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 113 

" Host " or " sacramental king " in a " tabernacle," with 
" a lamp burning night and day before it." '' Would they 
maintain, in the face of history and of the unanimous testi- 
mony of the whole people of these islands, that any provis- 
ion whatever was made for such a guest in the Church of 
England." It would be very bold in them to do so. 
" Where was the tabernacle ? " Where it was a thousand 
years ago — nowhere. The Church of England showed her 
reverence in no such way. According to the Dean, she 
didn't show it at all. " Whole masses," he said, " of ' con- 
secrated ' bread and wine, not consumed by the communi- 
cants, were afterwards, in a multitude of parishes, and even 
in some of their cathedrals, left to the discretion of the 
clerk, who took them home, or cast them into a graveyard, 
or otherwise disposed of these despised fragments of a 
divine banquet, at his own caprice. And their Prayer-Book 
contained nothing to prevent such acts." This last asser- 
tion was " important if true." The Dean would therefore 
be thankful to him, no doubt, for repeating it (as he pro- 
posed to do) and for placing side by side with it one of the 
rubrics at the end of the Communion Office in the English 
Prayer Book, so that the reader might see at a glance the 
truth of the Dean's statement : 

" And their " And if any of the Bread and Wine re- 

Prayer Book main unconsecrated, the Curate shall have 
contained it to his own use : but if any remain of 
nothing t o that which was consecrated, it shall not be 
p r event carried out of the Church, but the Priest 
such acts." and such other of the Communicants as he 

shall then call unto him, shall, immediately 
after the Blessing, reverently eat and drink 
the same." 
Perhaps the reader, by this time, was beginning to think 
that the Dean was in a Critical condition. Father Newman 
would call his statement " Blot " — well ! say, ninety-nine ; he 
hadn't kept count, and he didn't wish to exaggerate : and 



114 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

there was one more to come, and that would make the 
number just a hundred. Really, quite a moderate allow- 
ance ; only one to every page-and-a-third of the Peoples' 
Edition, Price 25 Cents ! " " Only that, and — nothing; 
more! " — "Xow he had taken pains to inquire of a Roman 
Catholic friend what was the practice of his Church ? Her 
rubrics, which he had examined " (evidently he took more 
interest in the Roman Church than in the Anglican ; else, 
why had he not "examhied" her rubrics, especially as he 
was bound by them, and thereby saved himself from that 
ugly " &^^," to use Father Newman's soft name for a hard 
thing, — a thing that could be more appropriately desig- 
nated, in good honest Saxon English, by three letters than 
,by four), "seemed to make provision for ever}^ conceivable 
accident which could possibly occur " (even such an " acci- 
dent " as a " poisoned host,''* though why provision should 
be made against such an accident, it was hard to see, as only 
accidents remained after the consecration : could the acci- 
dents of arsenic, or prussic acid, poison a man ?) " and min- 
utely directed in what manner they should severally be dealt 
with. If, in spite of every precaution, a particle should fall 
to the ground, — an event, he was assured, which was almost 
unknown, it was immediately raised with all reverence and 
replaced in the Paten or Ciborium, and at the close of the 
service the clergy went in procession, and, kneeling on their 
knees, cut out the piece of the carpet on which the particle 
had fallen, and carefully consumed it by fire. Well, these 
men were at least consistent." 

No ! that was exactly what they were not. If they were, 
they would cut- off the thumb and finger with which they 
had handled the host, and carefully consume them by fire. 
There was more reason for the latter than for the former, for 
the carpet had come in contact with only one particle, 
w^hereas the thumb and finger had come in contact with 
many, and at each contact a portion was left adhering. The 

* See Note H, 32, 33, 



COMEDY OP CONVOCATION. 115 

r difference between replacing the sensible portion that had 
fallen, and burning the insensible portion that adhered to 
the carpet, was the difference between reverence and super- 

. stition; there was but a step from the one to the other, but 
it was the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

But how did they identify ''the piece of the carpet" 
w^hen they "went in procession"? Had they kept their 
eye upon it all the while ? If so, it must have disturbed 
the reverential administration of the sacrament to the re- 
maining communicants. Or did they stop in the midst of 
the service to mark the spot ? And how did they manage 
when it fell in a dark spot, where it could not be readily 
discerned ? Did they stop to search for it ? And suppose 
they did not find it, did they burn the wdiole carpet ? Or if, 
instead of a carpet, there was a pavement of encaustic tiles, 
did they dig up the tile, or, if the particular one could not 
be ascertained, the whole tiling, and consume it with iire ? 
If so, how hot did the fire have to be ? — Leaving the Dean 
to " examine " the rubrics on these and other like ques- 
tions, he w^ould pass to the consideration of the only re- 
maining point — the celibacy of the clergy : it need not de- 
tain us long. 

" That latest invention of connubial repose, an English 
parsonage-house," was an eye-sore to our Roman friends. 
It w^as a pity they had not a similar arrangement in every 
village of Southern Europe. Such an exemplification of 
" the most perfect ideal of a Christian family,"* w^ould ele- 
vate the tone of the community in regard to the sanctity of 
marriage, instead of dejjressing it as the Roman Church had 
done by turning that sole surviving institution of Eden at 
once into a sacrament and a degradation. Where marriage 
was held degrading in the clergy, it necessarily ceased to 
beheld "honorable" in the laity. Like 2:>eople liJce 2^riest.f 
" He could not conceive S. Paul or S. John starting on a 
nuptial tour, accompanied by the ' latest fashions.' " 

* See Note H, 34. t Hos. iv. 9. 



116 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

That " accompaniment " was rather hard to conceive of, . 
inasmuch as the ladies of those days had but one " fashion," 
and that an early one. The " nuptial tour " might be hard 
to conceive of, too, for Ae reason that it was probably the 
invention of a later age. He was inclined to think it was 
nof yet a hundred years old : our fathers took their brides 
home at once, as did the Orientals in the time of our Lord. 
But there was no difficulty in " conceiving " of the " Prince 
of the Apostles " as a married man, for he certainly had a 
"wife's mother," and therefore must at least have Jiad a 
wife ; and S. Paul hinted not obscurely at his having one in 
his day, and taking her about with him. " Have we not 
power to lead about a sister, a wife {a6e?^,(})yv ywaiKo), as well 
as other Apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Ce- 
phas ? "* He was aware that the Anglo-Roman version au- 
thorized by " James, Archbishop of Baltimore " translated 
it (after the Yulgate) " a woman a sister," but he was 
equally aware that, to do that, it had to invert the order of 
the Greek, for, as S. Paul wrote it, it would not bear such a 
rendering. Professor Ornsby's Note, in Cardinal Mai's Greek 
Testament (Codex Yaticanus), Dublin Edition, referred us 
to dvSpeg adeA^oi^ Acts vii. 2, et passim, as a like construction ; 
but, instead of being " like," it was just the reverse, as was 
also yvvalKa xhpoA)-) S. Luke iv. 26, " a woman a widow." In 
every instance of this appositive construction in Greek, the 
defining noun came last. It was a law of the language. 
Hence the early Greek Fathers so interpreted the passage ; 
as did also Tertullian, one of the earliest of the Latin 
Fathers : " It was lawful," he said, " even for Apostles to 
marry, and lead about wives."t But gradually another in- 
terpretation grew, up among these latter, and from it arose 
" that objectionable custom in the Church, that presbyters 
should have female attendants {mulieres subintroductce) in- 

* 1 Cor. ix. 5. 

t "Licebat et Apostolis nubere et uxores circumducere."— i)6 ^a;^or^. 
Cast, c. 8. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 117 

stead of wives " — a custom condemned by Epiphanius,'** 
and forbidden by the Council of Ancyra.t There was an- 
other passage of S. Paul's that was misinterpreted by the 
Roman authorities : — A bishop then must be blameless, the 
husband of one wife, h* ^ * one that ruleth well his 
own house, having his children in subjection with all grav- 
ity. * * * Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, 
ruling their children and their own houses well."| " Of one 
wife," i. €., said Professor Ornsby, " must not have been 
married more than once. Compare ch. v. 9." He had 
" compared " it, and found that it was against the Profes- 
sor's interpretation. It read, " having teen the wife of one 
man " {yeyowld) ; whereas, in the passages in question, it 
was, "56 the husband of one wife " {elvai^ eaTCdaav). When 
the Apostle meant " having heen/' he said so ; and when he 
meant " te" he said so : had he meant " have heen," in the 
passages in question, he would have said, yeyovevai, instead 
of elvac ; yeyoviroxjav^ instead of iaruaav. He thanked the 
Professor for calling his attention to " ch. v. 9," for it prov- 
ed incontrovertibly that the Apostle contemplated, as a part 
of his arrangement for the Church of Ephesus, " bishops " 
having a wife and children, and actually living with them.% 
And what the Apostle thus contemplated, was originally 
carried out in the whole Church, though restrictions were 
put upon the contracting of marriage after ordination. As 
to the supposed incompatibility of marriage with the 
priestly character, and the superiority of the single to the 
married state except as giving (to those who could receive 
it) II opportunity to " attend upon the Lord without distrac- 
tion,"1[ it was a Marcionite heresy, and all the special plead- 
ing of the Count De Maistre couldn't make anything else 
of it.** It was condemned in anticipation by S. Paul.tt It 

* Haeres Ixviii. t Canon xix. % 1 Tim.iii. 2, 4, 12. 

§ See note I, 3. 11 St. Matt. xix. 11, 12. 

^ 1 Cor. vii. 35. '' For the evil is not in the cohabitation, but in the im- 
pediment to the strictness of life."— St. Chrysost., Horn. xx. in St. Matt, 
** For a specimen of this special pleading, see Note A, 55-70. 
ft 1 Tim. iv. 1-5. 



118 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

was condemned by the Fifth of the " Apostolic Canons," 
which enacted that ^'A bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall 
not put away his wife under pretext of religion. If he does, 
he shall be separated from communion ; and if he persevere, 
he shall be deposed." It was condemned by the Council of 
Gangra — a council received by the whole Church — the 
Fourth Canon of which anathematized " those who separate 
themselves from a married priest, as though it were not right 
to communicate in the oblation, when such an one minis- 
ters." And when, in the following year, it sought recogni- 
tion in the Council of Nice, it was unanimously repudiated ;* 
and it had been repudiated in the Glreek Church from that 
day to this : only the Roman Church could be brought to 
cast such a slur on the " Prince of the Apostles." The Pope 
was all the time talking about the patrimony of S. Peter, 
but said nothing of his matrimony. Holy Scripture, on the 
other hand, spoke repeatedly of his matrimony, but said 
nothing of his patrimony, unless we might include under 
that designation his nets,t his shipj (which was a small 
fishing craft), and half a house ;§ and these he forsook to 
follow Jesus. Silver and gold he had none.|| 

" Nor could the i^iagination picture, in its wildest mood, 
the majestic adversary of the Arian emperor attended on his 
fight up the Nile by Mistress Athanasius." 

Perhaps not. But it required no '' wild mood " of the 
imagination, but only a very tame humdrum exercise of that 
faculty, to ^'picture" Mistress John XXIII., Mistress Inno- 
cent YIII., Mistress Alexander YI., and a hundred thousand 
other Mistresses^ in Jifty thousand parsonages, in the middle 
and the South of Europe, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fif- 
teenth centuries. He was not dealing in random assertions ; 
he meant what he said, and a good deal more. If I doubted, 
I had only to consult the twenty -first chapter of Mr. Henry 
C. liQ2i^ Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 8vo. pp. 601, 
Philadelphia, 1867. He would read me an extract or two : 

* Socrat., H. E., Lib i. c. 11 ; Sozomen, H. E., Lib. i. c. 23. 

+ St. Matt. iv. 20. % St. Luke v. 3. § St. Mark i. 29. i] Acts iii. 6. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 119 

" There can be no denial of the fact that notorious and 
undisguised illicit unions, or still more debasing secret li- 
centiousness, was a universal and pervading vice of the 
Church throughout Christendom." — p. 345. 

" The records of the Middle Ages are accordingly full of 
the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind 
prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy. * * * 
The abuse of the awful authority given by the altar and the 
confessional was a subject of sorrowful and indignant de- 
nunciation in too many synods for a reasonable doubt to be 
entertained of its frequency or of the corruption which it 
spread throughout innumerable parishes." — pp. 352, 353. 

" What were the influences of the papal court in the next 
century may be gathered from the speech which Cardinal 
Hugo made to the Lyonese, on the occasion of the depar- 
ture of Innocent lY. in 1251 from their city, after a resi- 
dence of eight years — 'Friends, since our arrival here, we 
have done much for your city. When we came, we found 
here three or four brothels. We leave behind us but one. 
We must own, however, that it extends without interrup- 
tian from the eastern to the western gate ' — the crude cynic- 
ism ot which greatly disconcerted the Lyonese ladies pres- 
ent."— p. 356. 

For the original latin of this speech, as given by Mathew 
Paris, he referred me to the foot note in Mr. Lea's book. 

He would now read me an extract from the appeal of 
Maximilian H. to the Council of Trent, first handing me the 
Latin original that I might compare his translation with 
it: * 

" For who does not see and deplore, that even among 
Catholic priests throughout Germany and the realms and 
dominions of his imperial majesty, and the serene Prince 
Charles, Archduke of Austria, almost none or at any rate 
among many scarcely one real celibate was to he found; but al- 
most all * * '^ were notorious keepers of concubines, 
* See Note H, 10, n. 



120 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

or even secretly married ; nay that the greater part were 
not content with one concubine, but kept several at a 
time." 

In this way they were but following the example set at 
the Vatican. " The latter half of the fifteenth century," 
said Mr. Lea, " scarcely saw a supreme pontiff without the 
visible evidences of human frailty around him, the unblush- 
ing acknowledgement of which was the fittest commentary 
on the tone of clerical morality." (pp. 358, 359.) The 
prophecy put into the mouth of a Dominican by Mapes, 
tw^o hundred years before (Lea, p. 304), was having its ful- 
filment : 

Habebimus clerici duas concubinas : 
Monachi, canonici, totidem vel trinas : 
Decani, prselati, quatuor vel quinas : 
Sic tandem leges implebimus divinas. 

Verily, what the Count De Maistre said of the human race 
in Europe in the tenth century,* might be said with equal, 
if ^ not greater truth of the priesthood in the fifteenth: it 
had, '' literally " " gone crazy." But what drove it crazy ? 
How came such priests, not to say men, to be possible ? 
" They were the natural product of a system which for four 
centuries had bent the unremitting energies of the Church 
to securing temporal power and wealth, with exemption 
from the duties and liabilities of the citizen. Such were 
the fruits of the successful theocracy of Hilde*brand, which, 
intrusting irresponsible authority to fallible humanity, came 
to regard ecclesiastical aggrandizement as as a full atone- 
ment for all and every crime. That the infection had 
spread even to the ultimate fibres of the establishment could 
readily be believed."t 

But why was a system that had produced such results 
still kept up ? For two reasons. First, because its uphold- 
ers thought that they were succeeding at last in so effectually 
" driving out nature with a fork " that it wouldn't " keep 

* See Note A, 45. t Lea, p. 359. 



COMEDY OF CONYOCATIOJiT. 121 

coming back." In proof of this, they pointed to the state 
of things in the more enlightened countries of Europe and 
in the United States. But to what was this state of things 
owing ? Partly to '^ the wholesome restraints imposed by a 
jealously hostile public opinion " originating outside of the 
Roman Communion, and the "liability not only to the 
municipal law, but to the rigor of the canons mercilessly 
enforced by prelates who felt that their church was on pro- 
bation," and partly to the comparatively small proportionate 
number of clergy to laity in these countries and hard work 
of the priesthood thence resulting, and consequent " few 
temptations for those whose faith and resolution did not fit 
them to endure all its privations and fulfil all its duties." * 
But in the States of the Church, where, fifteen years ago, 
one in every eighty-two of the population was vowed to 
celibacy, — a proportion ten time as large as in France, — 
according to Edmund About, " chastity in a churchman was 
a quality sufficiently uncommon to attract special attention 
to its possessor." t In Spain, it was hinted not obscurely by 
Mr. Ffoulkes, there was a similar condition of things : 

" From Seville I proceeded to a small village in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Sierra of most primitive description. There 
I remained several months. * * * The priest was affable 
and intelligent ; and seemed anxious to promote education : 
but he was a good deal mixed up in the secular affairs of 
his neighboi!?rs as well : and the honours of his house were 
always done by one who went by the name of his ' cugina,' { 
but I was laughed at for supposing it meant the relation- 
ship that we understand by it. I could only therefore ac- 
count for the average respect that was paid him on the sup- 
position that such things were not uncommon." § 

In Central and South America, where the Roman Church 
had had exclusive and uninterrupted possession for three 

* Lea., pp. 558, 559, t Id., p. 560. 

t Cousin (female). § Letter to Abp. Manning, Am. Ed., pp. 67, 68, 

6 



122 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

hundred years, *' with no hostile public opinion " within a 
thousand miles of it to keep it in check, matters were still 
worse. If I wanted an instance, it should be forthcoming. 
Here he handed me a book bearing the title, " What I saw 
on the West Coast of South and North America, and at the 
Hawaiian Islands. By H. Willis Baxley, M.D. Kew York : 
D. Appleton & Co., 1865.^' Dr. Baxley, I may remark, is a 
Baltimorean, well-known to the Archbishop and the rest of 
our clergy there as an unimpeachable witness. It was as 
Special Commissioner of the United States, in the years 
1860y 1861, and 1862, that he visited the places in question. 
In his preface he says, " among other things noted are the 
doings of certain religionists. This has been done with the 
freedom and candor demanded by the importance of the 
subject. 

''I Bpeak not of inen''s creeds— they rest between 
Man and his Maker— but of things allowed^ 
Averr'd and known— and daily, hourly seen.' "' 

Turning to page 14B, I learned, to my astonishment , that 
in Lima, a city having, according to the Statistical Tables 
in Mitchell's Atlas^ in 1860, a population of but 55,000^ 
there were in 1858 '* one thousand seven hundred and ninety- 
three priests, exercising ecclesiastical authority, and perform- 
ing religious functions "—one priest to every thirty inhabi- 
tants ; that is to say, one man in eDery seven Dowed to celibacy. 
— Further down on the same page is the following : 

" If priests, taking vows of chastity and devotion alone 
to God, perjure themselves, obey the lusts of the flesh, and 
scatter their illegitimate offspring abroad, with the sole 
self-deluding merit of not disowning them, thus giving the 
brazen lie to their profession, it is to be expected that in 
both lying and lechery they will find imitators among those 
whose temporal purity they should guard, and whose eternal 
welfare it is their solemn duty to promote. The unblushing 
boldness with which clerical debauchery stalks abroad in 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 123 

Lima, renders it needless to put in any saving clause of 
declaration." 

On the next page is the following : 

"If the Bishop of Arequipa will turn to the ^weak and 
beggarly elements of the world,' if he cannot, like his great 
predecessor S. Paul, ' contain,' but must obey the carnal 
desires, ' let him marry ' as he is commanded by the Apostle, 
like an honorable man and consistent Christian, and not 
prove a stumbling-block to his more scrupulous brother. 
And let him not encourage the frailty of depraved disciples 
by a shameless example of licentiousness made public by 
his procurement of separate apartments in Lima for his seven 
concubines and his thirty-five illegitimate children, during 
his absence on a mission to the Roman head of the Church ; 
who, if rumor speak truth of his virtues, would spurn him 
from his presence if aware of such scandalous libertinism." 

Turning over a leaf, I came to this : 

" That it may not be supposed that I am looking at what 
is passing around me with prejudiced eyes, and coloring 
first impressions of novelties too highly, I will quote at 
some length from ^A Travers VAmerique du Sud^ par F. 
Dahadie. Paris, 1859.* This French traveller, himself a Eo- 
man Catholic, but evidently not one whose sense of religious 
duty inculcates the sin of compromising the lofty character 
and capacity for good of that Church, by concealing the 
wickedness of unworthy disciples, says : ' The religious pro- 
cessions of Lima are actually converted by profane women 
into Carnivals of Venice — ridiculous, absurd masquerades ! 
The ceremony loses its sacred character ; the tapadas abso- 
lutely making or refusing assignations with those proposing ; 
the assistants absolutely compressing the waists of the 
tapadas more frequently than they say their prayers. * * 
Lima is the heaven of women, purgatory of men, and hell 
of asses. * ^ * Women consider a husband only as he 
may contribute to their love of dress and indulgence ; 
interest with them is the only motive of marriage.' " 



124 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

And, two pages further on, to this : 

" Mons. Dabadie continues : ' In the streets of San Fran- 
cisco ' (Lima), * opposite the monastery of that name, a 
kind of barracks is found contaning quite a population 
apart from the rest. There, lives a class of women and 
children, whom (who ?) one would think came in a direct 
line from gypsies, if their complexion did not show a variety 
of a thousand shades from white to black. These women 
are the acknowledged mistresses, and the children the 
progeny of the monks of the higher order ' (what sort of 
monks I thought, must those of the lower order be), ' who 
visit them at all times, and pay them a stipend according 
to their means ; meagrely, for the expulsion of the Spaniards 
from the country has impoverished the convents." " La 
casa de la(s) monjas " — the house of nuns — as the people 
ironically call it, is a real Gomorrah. The clerical protectors 
of the tenants who inhabit it, iDillingly mistake the chambers^ 
not having the weakness of the laity of teing jealous of each 
other. Do not suppose that we are amusing ourselves in 
speaking ill of the monks of Lima. Observe them on a 
festival day of great sanctity, either in the procession or in 
the churches, and you will hate proved their bare-faced 
licentiousness. In tedious ceremonies, brothers who have 
no active participation in the service, go out of the temple 
and smoke in the adjacent cloister, under the portico of the 
church, or on the sidewalk, amusing themselves with trifles. 
It is shocking to find them in the processions, when bearing 
the cross, (?) banners, aud candles, having no respect for 
their robes, nor for the sainted images they carry, nor for 
religion, nor for decencies demanded by the occasion. They 
shut both heart and ear to the sacred songs which ascend 
towards heaven. They smile at the women, who flutter 
about like butterflies, as the cortege is passing along ; cast 
lascivious glances at them, and address to them words of 
double meaning. On returning to the church, two lines of 
monks are often formed at the portal, through which the 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 125 

crowd pass into the interior, and there too they indulge 
themselves without restraint in jest and sarcasm, compli- 
ment and repartee ; alluring complaisant Christian senoritas, 
white, black, or copper-colored, and addressing to them 
shameless gallantries ; the spectator, I will not say religious, 
but merely of proper delicacy, turning away in disgust from 
such unblushing libertinism. These abominations among 
themselves they are the first to expose, for in their stated 
elections for superiors of convents, such is the bitterness of 
rival aspirants and their partizans, that they publicly charge 
against each other infamous transactions, making known 
the number of their concubines and illegitimate children, 
and crimes which society Tias deemed it necessary to erect 
penitentiaries to punish.' 

" Such is the testimony on Peruvian morals and religion, 
of a French traveller, happily free from the imputation of 
sectarian prejudice." 

Here I closed the book and handed it -back to O'Kaye. I 
was satisfied, I said, that the Hildebrandean system had as 
yet succeeded in "driving out nature" only in the more 
enlightened countries of Europe and in the United States 
and British America; but as it had succeeded in those 
countries, why might it not yet succeed in the rest of Europe 
and in Spanish America ? It might, he said, on the same 
conditions, one of which was the letting in of the non-Roman 
Communions to compete with it ; but that the Pope consid- 
ered worse than the disease ; and besides, it would take it 
two hundred years, as it had done in central Europe, to 
accomplish its work. And when it was accomplished, what 
had we ? A system which by the very condition of its 
existence was precluded from " possessing the land ; " for it 
could exist in purity only under the constant surveillance of 
a hostile public opinion. Such being the case, it would 
have been abandoned long since but that Tri dentine Roman- 
ism would have gone with it. This was the second reason 
he had reference to. The Count De Maistre was right when, 



126 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

referring to the " scandalous concubinage " formerly existing, 
lie said, " There wanted only a blunderhead to annihilate 
the'''' {Tridentine) ^^ priesthood^ by proposing the marriage of 
priests as a remedy for greater evils." * 

The case of the Janizaries was in point. 

" The Janizaries of the Porte were Christian children, 
recruited by the most degrading tribute which tyrannical 
ingenuity had invented. Torn from their homes in infancy, 
every tie severed that bound them to the world around 
them ; the past a blank, the future dependent solely upon 
the master above them ; existence limited to the circle of 
their comrades, among whom they could rise, but whom 
they could never leave ; such was the corps which bore 
down the bravest of the Christian chivalry and carried the 
standard of the Prophet in triumph to the walls of Vienna. 
Mastering at length their master, they wrung from him the 
privilege of marriage ; and the class in becoming hereditary, 
with human hopes and fears disconnected with the one idea 
of their service, no longer presented the same invincible 
phalanx, and at last became terrible only to the effeminate 
denizens of the seraglio."t 

The celibate priesthood were the Janizaries of Rome : the 
Tridentine Church could never be Catholic, with thera ; it 
could never &6, without them. 

So much for "Mistress Athanasius." He thought the less 
the advocates of Rome said about Mistresses the better. 

" Only the other day, as he came through France, he read 
in a French journal the martyrdom of nine French bishops 
and priests at once in Corea. Did any one suppose that if 
they had been married, they would have coveted the crown 
of martyrdom ?" {Comedy^ p. 106.) 

Why not ? Did he never read, in Eusebius,J of Phileas, 
Bishop of Thmuis, and Philoromus, who had to be " urged^ 
in the persecution under Diocletian, to have pity on their 

* See Note A, 48 ; also 69, where the Popes are called the " realinstitutors 
of the priesthood." f Lea, pp. 19, 20. X L. viii. c. 9. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 127 

wives and children, and, for their sakes, to save their own 
lives " ? Did he never hear of John Rogers, whose wife 
" with nine small children, and one at the breast," followed 
him to the stake, in the reign of bloody Mary ? Perhaps 
even Pope Liberius,* if he had had a wife like Kidds's t 
might have coveted the crown of martyrdom. As it was, 
he certainly did not in that point violate the tenth com- 
mandment. 

" ' If your clergy were true priests,' he had been told, 
* they would display the supernatural virtues which accom- 
pany a divine vocation'" (p. 107). " He should not like to 
judge unkindly, but they had, as a class, a dreadfully unsu- 
pernatural look" (p. 111).' 

He should not like to judge unkindly, either; but, some- 
how or other, he could not help thinking that Simon Peter 
when, only a few days after he had received his great com- 
mission in the very words in which every priest of the 
, Church of England for the last two hundred years has re- 
ceived his,J he said, " I go a fishing," had " a dreadfully un- 
supernatural look;" and he could not help thinking, fur- 
ther, that when the other disciples said, " We also go with 
thee," they had '' a dreadfully unsupernatural look," too. 
And this impression of his in regard to Simon Peter was 
confirmed by the conduct of that disciple after he had got 
stripped to his work ; for if he had then that supernatural 
look which was here supposed to be the inheritance of his 
alleged successors, why, when he " heard that it was the 
Lord " that had just spoken to them, did he " gird his fish- 
er's coat unto him ?" On the other hand, he had no doubt 
that the Bishop of Arequipa and the priests of Lima had a 
dreadfully natural look. Father L * * * * was a very different 
man ; but he would like to see Mm look in the glass and then 
read with a grave face all that bosh about the Roman clergy 
having a more supernatural look than the non-Roman. Very 

* See I^ote E. t Comedy, p. 113. 

X St. John, XX. 22, 23. 



128 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

possibly ^^m^ Roman priests did, sometimes^ hsiYe a dread- 
fully supernatural look. He should not wonder if Father 
Kavanaugh had, when he was so unceremoniously walked 
out of church by " some of the most prominent members " 
of the Congregation " of the Holy Family," and if Bishop 
McQuaid had, when he was compelled to follow him ; or if 
not then, at any rate, when, a day or two after, he went to 
law about it, " and that before the unbeliever," and was as 
unceremoniously walked out of court as he had before been 
out of church. One thing was certain. If Roman bishops 
and priests were not " men of like passions "* with the rest 
of mankind, then they were not successors of "the Apostles 
Paul and Barnabas," and of the fishermen, Peter, and An- 
drew, and James, and John. 

" You are always tempted to think : ' These are men who 
have never received the Sacraments, and in w^hose face there 
is no reflection of the Sacramental Presence'" (p. 111). 
a i rj^^Q grace of Orders does not appear in them, therefore 
they are not validly ordained.' He believed he was not de- 
ficient in courage, but he never heard this argument without 
trying to change the conversation" (p. 107). 

No woi^der. No sensible man would wish to listen to such 
nonsense. Whoever told the Rev. Athanasius Benedict that 
the validity of Orders depended on the appearing of the 
grace of Orders in the Ordained, was evidently trying to 
see how much the gapi,ng neophyte could swallow. The 
Council of Trent could have told him better.! 

"A common divine vocation, accompanied by special gifts 
for a special object, must necessarily create, as it had ac- 
tually done in the vast Roman communion, an order of men 
moulded exactly according to the same type, teaching 
everywhere the same truths, and ruling their thoughts and 
lives by the same standard" (p. 120), "recipients of the 
same mysterious and constraining grace, flowing directly from 

^'0/LLOL07Ta6e~cg avdpQKot.—^^ts xiv. 15. 
t Sess. xiv. De Poenit. c. 6. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 129 

the august rite of ordination, and infused into the soul by a 
special divine operation, expressly to produce a uniform 
habit of mind and heart, and a uniform conception of reli- 
gious truth" (p. 135) ; "from the beginning, a supernatural 
caste, * * * clothed, by the transforming grace of 
Orders, with angelic purity and virginity" (p. 137).* 

Now, about the " type " of the Eoman priesthood all over 
Europe in the three centuries immediately preceding the 
Reformation, and in Spanish America at the present day, 
there could be no doubt ; yet the Comedy assured us that 
" in the vast Roman communion " the whole priestly "order" 
were " moulded exactly according to the same type." He 
did not believe it. He did not believe that the Roman 
priesthood in the United States were moulded exactly ac- 
cording to the same type with the Roman priesthood in 
Spanish ximerica. Neither did he believe, on the other 
hand, that they were " a supernatural caste, * * * * 
clothed, by the transforming grace of Orders, with angelic 
purity and virginity." That they were an unnatural caste — 
made such by their peculiar discipline — he had no doubt : 
just as little had he, that, in this, they were not the success- 
ors of the Apostles. As to "a uniform conception of reli- 
gious truth," &c., that was all in your eye : either it was 
not uniform, or it was not a conception, but only an intro- 
susception of what was neither read^ marlced^ learned^ nor 
inwardly digested?''^ To talk of three or four thousand 
priests — that was the number, he believed, of all sorts, reg- 
ular and secular, in the United States — thinking alike, was 
to talk nonsense : either they didn't think, or they differed 
from one another as much as S. James did from S. Paul, and 
S. John from both, and S. Peter from all three ; and how 
much that was, the most cursory reader of the New Testa- 
ment could not fail to see. 

" How can a Church which formally denies that ordination 

* See Note A, 66, 67. 
t Collect for Second Sunday in Advent. 
6* 



130 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

is a sacrament either pretend or desire to possess Roman Or- 
ders, which the Roman Church affirms to he a sacrament V 

How could a man who formally denied that a " greenback" 
was a dollar either pretend or desire to possess a . C/>ii^6^ 
States greenback, which the United States affirmed to he a 
dollar ? 

Really, it was extraordinary that such stuff should pass 
for argument among men trained as the Roman priesthood 
were in dialectics ! But the truth was, it didn't pass for 
argument with them, but they thousjht they might succeed 
in palming it off for argument upon the readers of the 
Comedy. It showed what sort of material they thought 
they might hope to make converts out of. He wished them 
joy of such converts. 

Yerily, there was, in some people's estimation, a good deal 
in a name ; especially, when it was made to bolster up a 
claim. 

" It was well known," said the Count De Maistre, " that 
those Churches (the oriental) called themselves orthodox, 
* * * What Church did not think itself orthodox ? and 
what Church allowed the title to others that were not in 
communion with it ? A large and magnificent city of 
Europe offered an interesting practical exemplification to 
which be called the attention of all thinking men. A 
rather contracted space contained within it Churches of all 
the Christian communions. You saw there a Catholic 
Church, a Russian Church, an American Church, a Calvinist 
Church, a Lutheran Church ; a little further on, you came 
,to the Anglican Chui-ch ; only a Greek Church, he believed,, 
was wanting. Ask, then, the first man you met, Wher3 is 
the Ortliodox Church ? Each Christian would direct you to 
his own ; a great proof already of a common orthodoxy. 
But if you asked. Where is the Catholic Church? All 
would answer : There it is! and all would point to the same. 
A great and profound subject of meditation ! " * 

* See Note A^ 79. 



COMEDY OF CON VOC ACTION. 131 

Very profound ! Going, as did most of the Count's phil- 
osophical remarks upon the Eoman Church, and other 
Churches, all the way through from the upper to the under 
side of the surface ! — The Count got that direction, how to 
find the- Catholic Church, from S. Cyprian, who gave it as — 
what it wo,s in his day, but what it had long since ceased to 
be — a 'practical direction. When Father Hewit, nearly a 
quarter of a century ago, went to Eome, as the popular 
phrase was, that was to say, to the Church of Rome, he 
published in a pamphlet his reasons for the step. When 
three or four years before, he came to the Church of the 
United States, he did not trouble himself to put forth his 
reasons for so doing ; it was a step whose propriety seemed 
so obvious to him as to require no justification: perhaps he 
might say, now^ that it was so slight a step as to require 
none ; he thought it a very long stride then^ and so did his 
father, j udging from his energetic remonstrance with a dis- 
tinguished prelate for Ms part in the transaction. — But when 
he went further and fared (spiritually) worse, he thought 
the step required apologizing for; hence his pamphlet. 
Among the reasons that he gave was, that he had but 
followed this direction of S. Cyprian's. Father Hewit was 
perplexed, and troubled, at the time, or he would have seen 
that the direction was no longer a practical one. He 
(O'Kaye) had too high an opinion of his (Father H.'s) 
ability to believe for a moment that he had now any confi- 
dence whatever in that argument. Even then, if he had 
reflected, he would have seen that it was a two-edged sword, 
and therefore dangerous on a back-handed stroke. If he 
had gone into almost any New England village having three 
or four places of worship — and the number of sucl^ villages 
even then was not small — and asked the first Baptist, Meth- 
odist, Trinitarian-Congregationalist, Unitarian, Universalist, 
Where is the Orthodox Church F All would have answered : 
There it is I and all would have pointed to the same, to wit, 
the Trinitarian-Congregational. A. great and profound sub- 
ject of meditation ! 



132 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Speaking of names, there was one about wMch the Cath- 
olic World^ in the before-mentioned article on Dr. Ewer, was 
very much exercised. " The Anglican Church," it said, " or 
a considerable portion of it, would, if it could, like to get 
rid (he supposed the writer meant, would like to get rid^ if 
it could) ^ of the name of Protestant^ and assume that of 
Catholic^ He (O'Kaye) should like to get rid of the name 
Protestant, and also of the name Episcopal ; not, however, 
for the reason that the Catholic World supposed, but be- 
cause they were superfluous. For the same reason, he 
should not like to assume the name of Catholic; in this 
respect, he was a y ax j unassuming man. If it lay with him, 
he would follow the model of the Mother Church, as she 
followed that of Holy Scripture, and call the Church at 
Whose altar he ministered, what she had always been de jure^ 
what she was slowly but surely becoming de facto^ the 
Church of the United States, 

Of course, the Catholic World would laugh, and it was 
welcome to laugh its fill ; and more, if that was n't 
enough : it would be cynical in him to grudge it that harm- 
less amusement. But which Church would laugh by and by ? 
The one that wins, he rather thought. And which that 
would be, he had no doubt. He had spent as yet not quite 
half his life in her communion, and, within that time, she 
had nearly quadrupled in numbers and more than quadru- 
pled in influence. Hence the affectionate interest, the 
Catholic World took in her fortunes — two articles upon her 
in one number. " In regard to other Christian denomina- 
tions," it said, (Article on the Gerieral Convention^ p. 467), 
" the Episcopal Church is singularly unfortunate. It has 
communion with no other body of Christians in the entire 
world." — Well, and was n't the Papal Church in the same 
" unfortunate " position ? With what " other body of 
Christians in the entire world " did it have " communion " ? 
Where, then, was the " singularity " ? 

" In like manner, when a church isolates itself from all 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 133 

the world by claims which everybody else on earth denies 
to it, there is something of the ridiculous in its position, 
and, while we may be pained, we are at the same time 
amused" {Id.^ p. 470). 

Exactly so. And as every Communion calling itself a 
Church (the Papal not excepted), by the very fact of its 
separate existence, "isolated itself" from every other by 
claims which they " denied to it," it followed that in every 
such separate organization there was to those outside of it, 
except the few who might be looking thoughtfully toward 
it, " something of the ridiculous in its position." If the 
Roman Church could stand the " ridiculousness," he rather 
thought the Anglican could too. 

And now, he had a confession to make. As the Catholic 
World had been exercised about the name of the Anglican 
Communion in the United States, so he had been exercised 
about a name for that of Rome. He had often wished that 
there were a word bearing the same relation to Boman that 
Anglican bore to English^ and Galilean to French^ and which 
would therefore be acceptable to both sides in a controversy 
like the present. He believed he had found it at last. In 
looking over the Triennial Catalogue of Harvard University 
for 1866, on page 169, under the head of AliM Instituti et 
Honor arii^ and under date of 1861, he came upon the fol- 
lowing : 

Johannes-Bernardus Fitzpatriclc^ S.T.D.^ 
Sanctae Bostoniensis Ecclesise Episcopus, A.A.S. 

Here it was. The Holy Boston Church I Could anything 
be more admirable ? The wonder was that it had not oc- 
curred to him before. For was not Boston the " hub of the 
universe ?" And where should the central sell be, if not in 
the — nave ? 

The only obj action to the name he could think of was 
that it might make Baltimore, and New York, aad the 
other archi episcopal sees, jealous. But what if it did? 
Who would ever talk of the Holy Kew York Church, where 



134 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

" many of the best seats " were '' invariably rented by 
wealthy Protestants, not because they had any active pref- 
erence for Catholic doctrine [he should think not ; they 
would go elsewhere if they had], but solely because they 
found the services less dismal than their own."* In other 
words, having no religion that they cared for, and being 
debarred from the opera on Sunday, they went to — what 
was the next best — that Church which, while excommuni- 
cating opera-singers and other stage-players eo nomine^ hired 
the said excommunicated opera-singers to do the music for 
the unexcommunicated worshippers ! Whether these latter 
on account of the throng of worldlings attracted by the 
spectacle^ kept their pews under lock and key, as was done 
in the Cathedral in Baltimore formerly, and, he presumed, 
still, though it was many years since he had been inside of 
it, and then only on a week-day, when there was no service 
going on, he could not say. He was glad, however, to learn 
from Archdeacon Jolly that ^' in England, there was still too 
much dislike to Popery to allow of such a diversion^ 

One more extract, and he had done with the Comedy : 

*' The English Church declares of Holy Order, as of Con- 
firmation, ' it is not a sacrament,' and therefore cannot confer 
sacramental grace, but is a purely human ceremony, con- 
veying nothing whatever but a license to preach, and the 
honorary title of Reverend"! ! (p. 118.) 

Blot — th, and last 

Casula. Has he got through. ? 

CKaye. Yes ! He has had it all his own way, for the 
last half-hour : you have said nothing. 

Casula. Because nothing could be said. As to the argu- 
ment, I shouldn't mind that; but it is not pleasant to be 
written down an ass. 

O'Kaye. Not very. But you'll get used to it after a 
while. Besides, you have the consolation that it is you that 
have done the writing. He has only stripped the lion's skin 

* Comedy, p. 127. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. • 135 

from off your ears, and forced you to a new kind of auric- 
ular confession ! 

For my part, his argument has convinced me, and I have 
come to bid the Pope good bye. So I will now say good- 
bye to you, wishing you, as the Archbishop did Gil Bias, all 
manner of prosperity, and in your next work of fiction, a 
little more taste ! 



NOTE A. 

EXTRACTS FROM THE WORK OF THE COUNT DE MAISTRE ON 
THE POPE. 

1. ''Les verites theologiques ne sont que des verites generales, manifes- 
tees et divinisees dans le cercle religieux, de maniere que Ton ne sauroit en 
attaquer une sans attaquere une loi du monde. 

2. " L'infaillibilite dans Tordre spirituel, et la souverainete dans Tordre 
temporel, sont deux mots parfaitement synonymes. L'un et Tautre expri- 
ment cette haute puissance qui les domine toutes, dont toutes les autre& 
derivent ; qui gouverne et n'est pas gouvernee, qui juge et n'est pas jugee. 

3. " Q,uand nous disons que I'Eglise est infaillible, nous ne demandons 
pour elle, il est bien essentiel de I'observer, aucun privilege particulier; 
nous demandons seulement qu'elle jouisse du droit commun a toutes les 
souverainetes possibles, qui toutes agissent necessairement comme infailli- 
bles ; car tout gouvernement est absolu ; et du moment ou Ton pent lui re- 
sister sous pretexte d'erreur ou d'injustice, il n'existe plus. 

4. '' La souverainete a des formes differentes, sans doute. Elle ne parle 
pas a Constantinople comme a Londres ; mais quand elle a parle de part et 
d'autre a sa maniere le bill est sans appel comme le fetfa. 

5. "II en est de meme de I'Eglise : d'une maniere ou d'une autre, il faut 
qu'elle soit gouvernee, comme toute autre association quelconque ; autre- 
ment il n'y auroit plus d' aggregation, plus d'ensemble, plus d'unite. Ce 
gouvernement est done de sa nature infaillible, c'est-a-dire absolu^ autre- 
ment il ne gouvernera plus. 

6. "Dans Tordre judiciaire, qui n'est qu'une piece du gouvernement, ne 
voit-on pas qu'il faut absolument en venir a une puissance qui juge et n'est 
pas ^ugee ; precisement parce qu'elle prononce au nom de la puissance su- 
preme, dont elle est censee n'etre que Torgane et la voix. Qu'on s'y pren- 
ne comme on voudra ; qu'on donne a ce haut pouvoir judiciaire le nom 



136 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

qu'on voudra ; toujours il faudra qu'il y en ait nn auquel on ne puisse dire : 
Vous avez erre. Bien entendu que celui qui est condamne, est toujours 
mecontent de Tarret, et ne doute jamais de I'ihiquite du tribunal ; mais le 
politique desinteresse, qui voit les choses d'en haut, se rit de ces vaines 
plaintes. II salt qu'il est un point oti il taut s'arreter ; il salt que les lon- 
gueurs interminables, les appels sans fin et rincertitudes des proprietes, 
sont, s'il est permis de s'exprimer ainsi, plus injustes que rinjustice. 

7. "II ne s'agit done que de savoir ou est la souverainete dans I'Eglise ; 
car des qu'elle sera reconnue, il ne sera plus permis d'appeler de ses deci- 
sions." — Du Pape. Par rAuteur des Considerations sur la France. 8econde 
Edition augmentee et corHgee par rAuteur. A Lyon, et a Paris, 1821. — Vol. 
i., pp. 2-4. 

8. " Tout nous ramene aux grandes verites etablies. II ne pent y avoir 
de societe humaine sans gouvernement, ni de gouvernement sans souve- 
rainete, ni de souverainte sans infaillibilite ; et ce dernier privilege est si 
absolument necessaire, qu'on est force de supposer I'infaillibilite, meme 
dans les souverainetes temporelles (ou elle n'est pas), sous peine de voir 
Tassociation se dissoudre. L'Eglise ne demande rien de plus que les autres 
souverainetes. quoique elle ait au dessus d'elles une immense superiorite, 
puisque T infaillibilite est d'un cote humainement supposee, et de Tautre 
divinement promise." — Id., pp. 198, 199. 

'' C'est la meme chose dans laj^ratique d'etre infaillible, ou de se tromper 
sans appel."— /c?., p. 346, n. 

9. ''Or, s'il y a quelque cbose d' evident pour la raison (?) autant que 
pour la foi, c'est que TEglise universelle est une monarchic." — Id., p. 4. 

10. " La forme monarchique une fois etablie, I'infaillibilite n'est plus 
qu'une consequence necessaire de la supr ematie, o\ii>lvit6t, c'estlameme 
chose absolument sous deux noms differens. Mais quoique cette identite 
soit evidente, jamais on n'a vu ou voulu voir que toute la question depend 
de cette verite ; et cette verite dependant a son tour de la nature meme des 
choses, elle n'a nullement besoin de s'appuyer sur la theologie."— /c?., p. 7. 

11. " C'est en efi'et absolument la meme chose dans la pratique, de n'etre 
pas sujet a I'erreur, ou de ne pouvoir en etre accuse." — Id., p. 8. 

12. "Les respectables prelats qui crurent devoir resister au Pape, a cette 
derniere epoque,[celle du concordat, pendant la revolution fran9aise,] pen- 
serent que la question etoit de savoir si le Pape s''etoit trompe : tandis qu' il 
s'agissoit de savoir s''il falloit dbeir quand mertie il se seroit trompe, ce qui 
abregoit fort la discussion."— /c^., p. 26, n. 

13. " II s'agit de savoir * * * s'il y a une puissance dans I'Eglise 
qui ait droit de juger si le Pape a hien juge, ei quelle est cette puissance ?" 
—Id., p. 128. 

14. " Allez dire a Rome que le Souverain Pontife n'a pas droit d'abroger 
les canons du coucile de Trente, surement on ne vous fera pas briiler." — 
Id.,i». 123. 

15. " Que veulent dire certains theologiens fran9ais avec lenrs canons f 
Et que veut dire, en particulier, Bossuet avec sa grande restriction qu'il 
nous declare a demi-voix, comme un mystere delicat du gouvernement ec- 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 137 

clesiastique : La plenitude de la puissance appartient a la chaire de 8. Pi- 
erre ,' MAIS nous demandons que V exercise en soit regie par les canons ? 
Qiiand est ce que les Papes ont pretendu le contraire ?'' — Id.^ p. 126. 

16. ''II y a done qiielque chose entre Tobeissance purement passive, qui 
enregistre une loi en silence, et la superiorite qui T examine avec pouvoir 
de la rejeter. Or, c'est dans ce milieu que les ecrivains gallicans trouveront 
la solution d'une difficulte qui a fait grand bruit, mais qui se reduit cepen- 
dant a rien lorsque on I'envisage de pres. Les conciles generaux peuvent 
examiner les decrets dogmatiques des Papes,— sans doute pour en penetrer 
le sens, pour en rendre compte a eux-memes et aux autres, pour les con- 
fronter a Tecriture, a la tradition et aux conciles precedens ; pour repon- 
dre aux objections; pour rendre ces decisions agreables, plausibles, evi- 
dentes,a I'obstination qui les repousse; pour enjuger^ en un mot, comme 
PEglise gallicane juge une constitution dogmatique du Pape avant de I'ac- 
cepter. A-t-elle le droit de juger un de ces decrets dans toute la force du 
terme, c-est-a-dire de Taccepter ou de le rejeter, de le declarer meme here- 
tique, s'il y echoit ? Elle repondra non ; car enfin le premier de ses at- 
tributs c'est le bon sens." — Id.^ pp. 136, 137. 

17. '' L'obligation imposee au souverain Pontife de ne juger que suivant 
les canons, si elle est donnee comme une condition de Tobeissance, est 
une puerilite faite pour amuser des oreilles pueriles ou pour en calmer de 
rebelles."— /c/., pp. 177, 178. 

18. " Je terminerai cette partie de mes observations par une nouvelle 
citation d'un theologien IranQais ; le trait est d'une sagesse qui doit frapper 
tous les yeux. 

19. '' ' Ce n'est,' dit-il, ' qu'une contradiction apparente de dire que le 
Pape est au dessus des canons, ou qu'il y est assujetti ; qu'il est le maitre 
des canons, ou qu'il ne Test pas. Ceux qui le mettent au dessus des can- 
ons. Ten font maitre, pretendent seulement qu'il enpeut dispenser ; et ceux 
qui nient qu'il en soit au dessus des canons ou qu'il en soit le maitre, veu- 
lent seulement dire qu'il n'en peut dispenser que pour Tutilite et dans les 
necessites de TEglise.'* < 

20. " Je ne sais ce que le bon sens pourroit ajouter ou 6ter a cette doc- 
trine, egalement contraire au despotisme et a T anarchic. "—/t?., pp. 182, 
183. 

21. " Quant aux hommes qui, par naissance ou par systeme, se trouvent 
hors du cercle catholique, s'ils m'addressent la meme question : Qu''est-ce 
qui arretera le Papef je le repondrai : Tout ; les canons, les lois, les cou- 
tumes des nations, les souverainetes, les grands tribunaux, les assemblees 
nationales, la prescription, les representations, les negociations, le devoir, 
la crainte, la prudence, et par-dessus tout, Topinion reine dumondey- 
^Id., p. 193. 

22. "Lorsqu', au commencement du siecle dernier, Leibnitz, correspon- 
dant avec Bossuet sur la grande question de la reunion des Eglises, deman- 
doit, comme un preliminaire indispensable, que le concile de Trent fut de- 

* Thomassin, Discipline de I'Eglise, tom. V. p. 295. 



138 AFTERPIECE TQ THE 

Clare non-CBCumenique ; Bossuet justement inflexible sur ce point, lui de- 
clare cependant que tout ce qu'on peut faire pour faciliter le grand oeuvre 
c'est de revenir sur le concile par vote (T explication. Qu'il ne s'etonne 
done plus si les Papes out permis quelquefois qu'on revint sur leurs deci- 
sions par vote cT explication.'''' — /c?., p. 138. 

23. " Lorsque Pascale defend sa secte contre le Pape, c'est comme s'il ne 
parloit pas ; il faut Tecouter lorsqu'il rend a la suprematie du Pape le sage 
temoignage qu' on vient de lire. * * * Lorsque saint Cj^prian dit, 
en parlant de certains brouillons de son temps : lis osent s' addresser a la 
chaire de S. Pierre^ a cette Eglise supreme ou la dignite sacerdotale apris son 
origine * * * ^. Hs ignorent que hs domains sont des hommes aupres de 
qui Verreur ri'a pmnt d'acces., c'est veritablement saint Cyprien qu'on 
entend; c^est un temoin irreprochable de la foi de son siecle. 

24. ^' Mais lorsque les adversaires de la monarchie pontiflcale nous citent, 
usque ad nauseam., les vivacites de ce meme S. Cyprien contre le Pape 
Etienne, ils nous peignent la pauvre humanite an lieu de nous peindre la 
sainte tradition. C'est precisement Thistoire de Bossuet."— /<:/., pp. 75, 76. 

25. ^'Au reste, malgre les artifices infinis d'une savante et catholique 
condescendance, remercions Bossuet d'avoir dit dans ce fameux discours, 
que la puissance du Pape est une puissance supreme ; que . . . / que . . . ; 
que . . . ; que ....,* que , . . . / que des Vorigine du christianisme, les 
Papes out ToujouRS fait profession., en faisant observer les lois^ de les ob- 
server les premiers ; qu'ils eniretiennent V unite dans tout le corps ^ tantot par 
d'injlexibles decrets, et tantot par de sages temperamens ; que . . . ; que . . 
. . ,• que . . . ; que . . . ,* que la marque la plus evidente de V assistance 
que le St. Esprit donne a cette mere des Eglises, c'est de la rendre si juste et 
si moderee, que jamais elle n'ait mis les bxcbs parmi les dogmes.''"' — Id.., 
pp. 129-131. 

26. " Bercastel, dans son Histoire ecclesiastique, a cependant trouve un 
moyen tres ingenieux de mettre les eveques a Taise, et de leur conferer le 
pouvoir de juger le Pape. Le jugement des eveques, dit-il, ne s'exerce point 
sur le jugement du Pape, mats sur les matieres qu'il a jugees.'' (/) "De 

*nianiere que si le Souverain Pontile a decide, par exemple, qu'une telle 
proposition est scandaleuse et heretique, les eveques fran9ais ne peuvent 
dire qu'il s'est trompe {nefas) ; ils peuvent seulement decider que la propo- 
sition est edifiante et orthodoxe. 

27. '''Les eveques,' continue le meme ecrivain, 'consultent les memes 
regies que le Pape, Tecriture, la tradition, et specialement la tradition de 
leurs propres Eglises, afin d' examiner et de prononcer, selon la mesure 
d'autorite qu'ils ont re9ue de Jesus-Chx'ist, si la doctrine proposee lui est 
conforme ou contraire.' (Hist, de TEgl. tom. xxiv., page 93, citee par M. 
de Barral, no. 31, p. 305.) 

28. " Cette theorie de Bercastel preteroit le flanc a des reflexions severes, 
si Ton ne savoit pas qu'elle n'etoit, de la part de Testimable auteur, qu'un 
innocent artifice pour echapper aux parlemens et faire passer le reste." (!!!) 
—Id., p. 137. 

29. " Je me bornerai a citer quelques lignes du docte archeveque Mansi, 



COMEDY OP CONVOCATION. 139 

coUecteur des conciles ; elles prouveront peut-etre, a quelques esprits 
preocupes, 

Qu'ils est quelque bon sens aux bords de ritalie. 

30. " ' Supposons que Libere eut formellement soiiscrit a rarianisme (ce 
qu'il n'accorde point), parla-t-il dans cette occasion comme Pape, ex cathe- 
dra f Quels conciles assembla-t-11 prealablement pour examiner la ques- 
tion? Sil n'en convoqua point, quels docteurs appela-t-il a lui ? Quelles 
congregations institua-t-il pour definir le dogme ? Quelles supplications 
publiques et solennelles indiqua-t-il pour invoquer I'assistance de TEsprit- 
Saint ? S'il n'a pas rempli ces preliminaires, il n'a plus enseigne comme 
maitre et docteur de tons les fldeles. Nous cessons de reconnoitre, et que 
Bossuet le sache bien, nous cessons, dis-je, de reconnoitre le Pontife ro- 
main comme infaillible.'' * 

31. '' Orsi est encore plus precis et plus exigeant.t Un grand nombre de 
temoignages semblables se montrent dans les livres italiens, sed Greeds 
incognita qui sua tantum mirantur.'''' — Id.^ pp. 150, 151. 

32. '' Si Honorius avoit vecu a Tepoque du VI. concile, on Tauroit cite ; il 
auroit comparu, il auroit expose en sa faveur les raisons que nous employ- 
ons aujour-d'hui, et bien d'autres encore, que la malice du temps et celle 

des hommes out supprimees Mais, que dis-je? il seroitvenu presi- 

der lui-meme le concile ; il eiit dit aux eveques si desireux de venger sur un 
Pontife romain les taches kideuses du siege patriarcal de Constantinople : 
'Mes freres, Dieu vous abandonne sans doute, puisque vous osez juger le 
chef de TEglise, qui est etabli pour vous juger vous-memes. Je n'ai pas 
besoin de votre assemblee pour condamner le monothelisme. Que pourrez- 
vous dire que je n'aie pas dit ? Mes decisions suffisent a I'Eglise. Je dis- 
sous le concile en me retirant." (!!) — Id., p. 160. 

33. "Apres cela j'avoue ne plus rien comprendre a la condamnation 
d'Honorius. Si quelques Papes ses successeurs, Leon II, par exemple, ont 
paru ne pas s^elever contre les heUemsmes de Constantinople, il faut louer 
leur bonne foi, leur modestie, leur prudence surtout ; mais tout ce qu'ils 
ont pu dire dans ce sens n'a rien de dogmatique, et les faits demeurent 
ce qu'ils sont. 

34. " Tout bien considere, la justification d'Honorius m'embarrasse bien 
moins qu'une autre ; mais je ne veux point soulever la poussiere et m'ex- 
poser au risque de cacher les chemins. "—/(?., p. 162. 

35. " La foi catholique n'a done pas besoin, et c'est ici son caractere 
principal qui n'est pas assez remarque, elle n'a pas besoin, dis-je, de se 
replier sur elle-meme, de s'interroger sur sa croyance et de se demander 
pourquoi elle croit ; elle n'a point cette inquietude disertatrice qui agite 
les sectes. C'est le doute qui enfante les livres : pourquoi ecriroit-elle 
done, elle qui ne doute jamais ? 

* " Sed itd non egit ; non definivit ex cathedra, non docuit tanquam omni- 
um fldelium magister ac doctor. Ubi verd itd non se gerat, sciat Bossuet^ 
romanum Fontijicem infallibilem a nobis non agnosci. Yoyez la note de 
Mansi, dans Touvrage cite, p. 568." 

t '' Orsi, tom. L, lib. III., cap. XXVI., p. 118." 



140 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

36. "Mais si Ton vient a contester quelque dogme, elle sort de son etal 
naturel etranger a toute idee contentieuse ; elle cRerche les fondemens du 
dogme mis en probleme; elle interroge Tantiquite." — Id.^ p. 12. 

37. "Jamais aucune institution importante n' a resnlte d'une loi, et plus 
cette institution est grande, moins elle ecrit. * * * L'institution vegete 
ainsi a travers les siecles. Crescit occulto velut arbor cevo: c'est la devise 
eternelle de toute grande creation politique ou religieuse. Saint Pierre 
avort-il une connaissance distincte de I'etendue de sa prerogative et des 
questions qu' elle feroit naitre dans I'avenir ? Je Tignore. Lorsqu' apres 
une sage discussion, accordee a Texamen d'une question importante a cette 
epoque, il prenoit le premier la parole an concile de Jerusalem, et que 
toute la multitude se tut,* S. Jacques meme n'ayant parle a son tour du haut 
de son siege patriarcal, que pour confirmer ce que le chef des apotres venoit 
de decider (!), S. Pierre agissoit-il avec ou en vertu (^'une connoissance claire 
et distincte de sa prerogative, ou bien en creant a son caractere ce magnifi- 
que temoignage, n'agissoit-il que par un mouvement interieur separe de 
toute contemplation rationelle ? Je Tignore encore." t — Id., pp. 133, 135. 

38. " La plante est une image naturelle des pouvoirs legitimes. Consid- 
erez Tarbre : la duree de sa croissance est toujours proportionelle a sa force 
et a sa duree totale. Tout pouvoir constitue immediatement dans toute la 
plenitude de ses forces et de ses attributs, est par cela meme, faux, ephe- 
mere et ridicule. Autant vaudroit imaginer un homme adulte-ne." — Id., p. 
345. 

39. "L'Eglise gallicane n'eut presque pas d'enfance; pour ainsi dire, en 
naissant, elle se trouva la premiere des Eglises nationales et le plus ferme 
appui de T unite. "—/c?., Discours Preliminaire, p. xxvii. 

40. "L'Eglise catholique pouvoit etre representee par une ellipse. Dans 
Tun des foyers on voyoit S. Pierre, et dans Tautre Charlemagne : TEglise 
gallicane avec sa puissance, sa doctrine, sa dignite, sa langue, son prosely- 
tisme, sembloit quelquefois rapprocher les deux centres, et les confondre 
dans la plus magnifique unite." 

41. " Mais, 6 foiblesse humaine ! 5 deplorable aveuglement ! des prejuges 
detestables que j'aurai occasion de developper dans cet ouvrage, avoient 
totalement perverti cet ordre admirable, cette relation sublime entre les 
deux puissances. A force de sophismes, et de criminelles manoeuvres, on 
etoit parvenu a cacher au roi tres-cliretien Tune de ses plus brilliantes pre- 
rogatives, celle de presider (humainement) le systeme religieux, et d'etre 
le protecteur hereditaire de T unite catholique. Constantin s'honora jadis 
du titre (Teveqtce exterieur. Celui de souverain ijontife exterieur ne flattoit 
pas Pambition d'un successeur de Charlemagne ; et cette emploi, offert par 
la Providence, etoit vacant ! Ah ! si les rois de France avoit voulu donner 
main-forte a la verite, ils auroient opere- des miracles ! Mais que pent le 
roi \ovsqiie les lumih^es de son 2:)6uple sout eteintes .^ II faut meme le dire a 

* Acts XV, 12. 
t " Quelqu'un a blame ce doute ; mais comme je declare expressement 
n'y point insister, je me crois en regie. II me suffit de repeter ma profes- 
sion de foi : Bieu me preserve d'etre nouveau en voulant etre neuf ! " 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 141 

la gloire immortelle de Tauguste maison, T esprit royal qui Tanime a sou- 
vent et tres-heureusement ete plus savant que les academies, et plus juste 
que les tribunaux."— /cZ., Disc. Prel. pp. xxxii, xxxiii. 

42. " Quelle idee sublime que celle d'une langue universellepourFEglise 
universelle! * * * Eien n'egale la dignite de la langue latine. * * * 
Le terme de majeste appartient au latin. La Grece Tignore. * * * 
Chez nous, c'est le sacrifice qui est le veritable culte ; toutle reste est acces- 
soire : et qu'importe au peuple que ces paroles sacramentelles qui ne se 
prononcent qu'a voix basse, soient recitees en fran^ais, en allemand, etc., 
ouenhebreu? * * * Quant au peuple proprementdit, s'iln'entend pas 
les mots, c'est tant mieux. Le respect y gagne, et 1 intelligence n'y perd 
rien. Celui qui ne comprend point, comprend mieux que celui qui com- 
prend msi\r—Id., pp. 202, 203, 207, 209. 

43. ''Les empereurs grecs, dont la rage theologique est un des grands 
scandales de Fhistorie, etoient toujours prets a convoquer des conciles, et 
lorsqu'ils le vouloient absolument, il falloit bien y consentir ; car TEglise 
ne doit refuser a la souverainete qui s'obstine rien de ce qui ne faitnaitre 
que des inconveniens."" — Du Pape^ Vol. i. p. 22. 

44. " Parmi les catholiques meme, n'avonsnous pas vu TEglise gallicane 
humiliee, entravee, asservie par les grandes magistratures, a mesure et en 
proportion Jw5^6 de ce qu' elle se laissoit foUement emanciper envers la puis- 
sance pontificale? '''—Id,, p. 99, Note. 

45. " On pent dire, au pied de la lettre, en demandant grace pour une 
expression trop familiere, que vers le X. siecle le genre humain, en Europe, 
etdit devenufou. * * * * Pour defendre I'Eglise contre le debordement 
affreux de la corruption et de Tignorance, il ne falloit pas moins qu'une 
puissance d'un ordre superieur, et tout-a-fait nouvelle dans le monde. Ce 
fat celle des Papes. Eux-memes, dans ce malhereux siecle, payerent un 
tribut fatal et passager au desordre general. La Chaire pontificale etoit 
opprimee, deshonoree et sanglante ; mais bientot elle reprit son ancienne 
dignite ; et c'est aux Papes que Ton dut le nouvel ordre qui s'etablit. 

46. " II seroit permis sans doute de s'irriter de la mauvaise foi qui in- 
siste avec tant d'aigreur sur les vices de quelques Papes, sans dire un mot 
de Teffiroyable debordement qui regna de leur temps. 

47. " J'ai toujours eu d'ailleurs, sur cette triste epoque, une pensee qui 
veut absolument se placer ici. Lorsque des courtisanes toutes-puissantes, 
des monstres de licence et de sceleratesse, profitant des desordres publics, 
s'etoient emparees du pouvoir, disposoient de tout a Rome, et portoient 
sur le siege de S. Pierre, par les moyens les plus coupables, ou leurs fils ou 
leurs amans, je nie tres-expressement que ces hommes aient ete Papes. 
Celui qui entreprendroit de prouver la proposition contraire, se trouveroit 
certainement fort empeche." *—/<:?., pp. 282-284. 

* " Quelques theologiens que je respecte m'ont fait des objections surle 
paragraphe qu'on vient de lire. Peut-etre je pourrois le defendre ou I'ex- 
pliquer, mais je serois mene trop loin : j'aime mieux prier tout liomme et 
tout pouvoir a qui il deplaira, de I'efiacer sur son exemplaire. Je declare 
I'abdiquer." 



142 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

48. " Cependant I'empereur d'Allemagne vendoit publiquement les bene- 
fices ecclesiastiques. Les pretres portoient les armes ; * un concubinage 
scandaleux souilloit I'ordre sacerdotal ; il ne falloit plus qu'une mauvaise 
t§te pour aneantir le sacerdoce, en proposant le mariage des pretres comme 
un remede a de plus grands maux. "—/(?., pp. 288, 289. 

49. "Depuis trois siecles, I'histoire entiere semble n'etre qu'une grande 
conjuration contre la verite." — /c?., p 363, n. 

50. '' La diete de Forcheim ayant depose en 1077 I'empereur Henri IV., et 
nomme a sa place Rodolphe, due de Souabe, le Pape assembla un concile a 
Rome * * *, et I'election de Rodolphe fut confirmee. C'est alors que 
parut sur le diademe de Rodolphe le vers celebre : " 

" La Pierre a choisi Pierre, et Pierre t'a choisi." t— /c?., p. 338. 

51. " L'Eglise a done seule Thonneur, la puissance et le droit des mis- 
sions ; et sans le Souverain Pontife, il n'y a point d' Eglise. * * * ^ 
peine le Saint Siege est affermi que la sollidtude universelle transporte les 
Souverains Pontifes. Deja dans le V. Siecle ils envoient S. Severin dans 
la Norique," Sdc—M. torn. II. , p. 18. 

52. " ' Voila, disoit le grand Leibnitz, * * * la Chine ouverte aux 
jesuites, * * * . Sous le regne du roi Guillaume, it s'etoit forme une 
sorte de societe en Angleterre, qui avoit pour objet la propagation de 
TEvangile : mais jusqu'a present elle n'apas eu de grands succes.'^ 

53. " Jamais elle n'en aura et jamais elle n'en pourra avoir, sous quelque 
nom qu'elle agisse, hors de Tunite ; et non-seulement elle ne reussira pas, 
mais elle ne fera que du mal ; comme nous Tavouoit tout a I'heure une 
bouche protestante." — Id. pp. 21, 22. 

54. " Le christianisme qui agissoit divmement, agissoit par la meme 
raison lentement ; car toutes les operations legitimes, de quelque genre 
qu'eltes soient, se font toujours d'une maniere insensible. Partout ou se 
trouve le bruit, le fracas, Timpetuosite, les destructions, etc., on pent etre 
sur que c'est le crime ou la folie qui agissent." — Id. pp. 28, 29. 

55. " C'est une opinion commune aux hommes de tons les temps, de tons 
les lieux et de toutes les religions, qu'il y a dans la continence quelque 
chose de celeste qui exalte VTiomme et le rend agreable a la divinite ; que par 
une consequence necessaire, toute fonction sacerdotale, tout axite religieux^ 
toute ceremonie sainte., s' accorde peu ou ne s'accorde point avec Vusage meme 
legitime desfemmes. 

56. " Le pretre hebreu ne pouvoit pas ^pouserune femme repudiee, et le 
grand-pretre ne pouvoit pas meme epouser une veuve. § Le Talmud ajoute 
qu'il ne pouvoit epouser deux femmes, quoique la polygamic fiit permise 

* " 'II n'y avoit peut-etre pas alors un seul eveque qui crut la simonie un 
peche.' C'est le temoignage de S. Pierre Damien cite par le docteur Mar- 
chetti, dans sa critique de Fleury. (Tom. I., art. L, § IL, p. 49)." 

t '' Petra (c'est Jesus-Christ) dedit Petro Petrus diadema Bodulpho.^^ 

X " Leibnitzii epist. ad Kortholtam., dans ses ceuvres in 4to. pag. 323. — 
Pensees de Leibnitz in 8to. torn. L, pag. 275. 

§ " Levit. xxi., 7, 9, 13. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 143 

an reste de la nation ;* et tons devoient etre jmrs pour entrer dans le sanc- 
tuaire."— /c?. pp. 42, 43. 

57. " L'anti quite ne dit point a Thomme qui pense a s'approcher des 
autels : Examinez-vous bien. Si vous avez malheureusement tue, vole, con- 
jure, calomnie, difame quelqu' un, retirez-vous. Non. Des qu'il s'agit des 
dieux et des antels, on diroit qu'il n'y a plus qu'un seul vice et une seule 
vertu.t 

58. *' Jerusalem, Memphis, Athenes, Home, Benares, Quito, Mexico et 
les huttes sauvages de TAmerique, elevent done la voix de concert pour 
proclamer le meme dogme."— /c?., p. 63. 

59. " II n'y a pas d'exageration dans cette assertion de I'abbe de Feller : 
* Qu'un demi-siecle de paganisme presente infiniment plus d'exces enormes 
qu'on n'en trouveroit dans toutes les monarchies chretiennes depuis que 
le christianisme regne sur la terre.' ":{: — Id. pp. 64, 65. 

60. '* Qui ne seroit frappe de la decision d'un homme si bien place pour 
voir les choses de pres, et si ennemi d'ailleurs du systeme catholique ? 

61. " Quoiqu'il m'en coutat trop d'appuyer sur les suites du systeme 
contraire, je ne puis cependant me dispenser d'insister sur rabsoluenullite 
de ce sacerdoce dans son rapport avec la conscience de Fhomme. * * * 

62. " L'anatheme est inevitable. Tout pretre marie tombera toujours au 
dessous de son caractere. La superiorite incontestable du clerge catholi- 
que tient uniquement a la loi du celibat. "—/<:?. pp. 75-7T. 

63. "Alexandre VI. aima la guerre et les femmes ; en cela il fut tres-con- 
damnable, et pour trancher le mot, tres-criminel, a raison du contraste 
avec la regie, c'est-a-dire avec la sublimite de son caractere qui supposoit 
la saintete ; mais transportons-le a Versailles, il ne tiendra qu' a lui d'etre 
Louis XIV., justement celebre aussi par ses talens, sa politique et sa fer- 
mete et qui aimoit, comme i'autre, la guerre et les femmes.''— Id., p. 80. 

64. " On cite I'Angleterre : mais c'est en Angleterre surtout que la degi'a- 
dation du ministere evangelique est le plus sensible. Les biens du clerge 
Bont a peu pres devenus le patrimoine des cadets de bonnes maisons, qui 
s'amusent dans le monde comme des gens du monde, laissant du reste 

A des chantres gages le soin de louer Dieu. 

65. " Le banc des eveques, dans la chambre des pairs, est une espece de 
hors-d'oeuvre qu'on pourroit enlever sans produire le moindre vide. A 
peine les prelats osent-ils prendre la parole, meme dans les affaires de reli- 
gion."— /<i. p. 83. 

66. " Ce nom de y^arhurton me fait souvenir qu'au nombre de sesoeuvres 
se trouve une edition de Shakespeare avec une preface et un commentaire. 
Personne sans doute n'y verra rien de reprehensible de la part d'un homme 
de tettres ; mais que Ton se figure si Ton peut Christophe de Beaumont, par 

* '■ Talm. in Massechta Jona. 

t " Vos quoque abesse procul jubeo, discedite ah aris, 
Quels tulit hesterna gaudid noQ,te Venus."" 

(Tibull. Eleg. L, L. II., 11, 12.) 
% "Catech. Philos. Liege, 1788, in-12, torn. IIL,ch. 6, § 1, pag. 274." 



144 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

exemple, editeiir et commentateur de Corneille, ou de Moliere, jamais on 
n'y reussii'a. Pourquoi ? Parce que c'est un homme d'un autre ordre que 
Warburton. Tous les deux jportent la mitre. Cependant Fun est pontife 
et Tautre n'est qu'un gentleman. Le premier peut etre ridiculise ou fletri 
parce qui ne fait nul tort a I'autre. 

67. "On sait que lorsque Telemaque parut, Bossuet ne trouvapas Tou- 
vrage assez serieux pour unpretre. Je me garde bien de dire qu'il eut rai- 
Bon, je dis seulement que Bossuet a dit cela."" — Id., p. 90, n. 

68. " Nulle part I'etat ne gouverne TEglise ; mais toujours et partout 11 
gouvernera justement ceux qui, s'etant mis hors de I'Eglise, osent cependant 
s'appeler I'Eglise. II faut choisir entre la hierarchie catholique et la supre- 
matie civile, il n'y a point de milieu. Et qui oseyoitblamer des souver- 
ains qui etablissent Tunite civile partout ou ilfe n'en trouvent pas d'au- 
tre?"— /c?., p. 93, n. 

69. " La haute noblesse du clerge catholique est due toute entiere au celi- 
bat; et cette institution severe etant uniquement Touvrage des Papes se- ^ 
cretement animes et conduits par un esprit sur lequel la conscience ne sau- 
roit se tromper, toute la gloire remonte a eux ; et ils doivent etre consid- 
eres, par tous les jages competens, comme les veritables instituteurs du 
sacerdoce."— 7c?., p. 103. 

70. ''La source intarissable de la population, je ne dis pas d'une popula- 
tion precaire, miserable et meme dangereuse pour Tetat, mais d'une popu- 
tion saine, opulente et disponible, c'est la continence dansle celibat, etla 
chastete dans le mariage. Vainour accouple : c'est la vertu qui peuple. 
Platon n'a-t-il pas dit: 'Eendons les mariages aussi avantageux a Tetat 
qu'il est possible, et souveuons-nous que les plus saints sont les plus 
avantageux.'* * * * Toutes les religions du monde, sans excep- 
ter meme le christianisme separe, s'arretent a la porte de la chambre nup- 
tiale. Une seule religion entre avec les epoux et veille sur eux sans relache. 
Un voile epais couvre son action; mais il suffit de savoir ce qu'elle est, 
pour savoir ce qu'elle fait. * * * Parmi les lettres de S. FranQois de 
Sales, on trouve celle d'une femme de qualite, qui Tinterroge pour savoir 
si elle peut en co7iscience refuser d'etre epouse en certains jours solennels ou 
elle auroit voulu n'etre qu'une sainte. L'eveque repond et montre les lois 
du saint lit conjugal. Je transcrirois cette lettre, si je ne craignois le 
vice avec son vilain rire qui est insupportable.'' — Id.., pp. 109-111. 

Among the epistles of Paul the Apostle, is one addressed, not to a lady 
of quality, but to the Corinthian Christians, and through them to all Chris- 
tians, in the seventh chapter of which he treats of the same subject. I 
would transcribe what he says, were it not that it is accessible to my read- 
ers, for I have no fear, in connection with it, of " vice with its ribald 
laugh." If the Saint's delicacy does not equal the Apostle's, so much the 
worse for the Saint. Those who have the earlier instructions, will not 
suffer for want of the later. 

* Plat, de Rep. lib. V., 0pp. torn. YII., edit Bipont. pag 22. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 145 

71. "Si les Papes avoient eu surT empire d'Orient la meme aiitorite 
qu'ils avoient sur Tautre, * * * on parleroit fran^ais en Palestine, 
Les sciences, les arts, la civilization illustreroient ces fameuses contrees de 
TAsie."— /c?. p. 145. 

72. " Pierre I. ayant fait imprimer pour ses sujets, au commencement du 
siecle dernier, un catechisme contenant tons les dogmes qu'il approuvoit, 
cette piece fut traduite en anglais en Tannee 1725, avec une preface qui 
merite d'etre citee. 

73. " ' Ce catechisme,' dit le traducteur, ' respire le genie * * *, Les 
Russes et les reformes s'accordent sur plusieuks articles de foi, autant 
qu'ils diflerent de TEglise romaine.' 

74. " Sur ce point le traducteur a tort et ila raison. II a tort si Ton s'en 
tient aux professions de foi ecrites, qui sont les memes a peu de chose pres 
pour les Eglises latine et russe, et different egalement des confessions pro- 
testantes ; mais si Ton en vient a la pratique et a la croyance interieure, le 
traducteur a raison. Chaque jour la foi dite grecque s'eloigne de Rome et 
s'approche de Wittemberg." — Id. pp. 162, 163, n. 

75. " Le clerge n'etudie dans tout le cours de son education ecclesiastique 
que des livres protestans ; une habitude haineuse Tecarte des livres cathol 
iques, malgre 1 extreme affinite des dogmes, Bingham surtout est son ora- 
cle, et la chose est portee au point que le prelat que je viens de citer en ap- 
pelle tres-serieusement h. Bingham pour etablir que TEglise russe n'en- 
seigne que la pure foi des apotres,"* — Id.., p, 166, 

76. Je pourrois citer d'autres temoignages non moins decisifs ; mais il 
faut se borner."— /(i., p, 167. 

77. " Partout ou le peuple, possedant pour son malheur I'Ecriture sainte 
en langue vulgaire, s'avise de la lire et de Tinterpreter, aucune aberration 
de r esprit particulier ne doit etonner.— 7cZ,, p. 177, n. 

78. "Quant a I'invariabilite des dogmes ecrits, des formules nationales, 
des vetemens, des mitres, des crosses, des genuflexions, des inclinations, 
des signes de croix, etc, etc, je n'ajouterai qu'un mot a ce que j'ai dit 
plus haut, Cesar et Ciceron, s'ils avoient pu vivre jusque a nos jours, 
seroient vetus comme nous : leurs statues porteront eternellement la toge 
et le laticlave."— /cZ., p. 183, 

79. "On salt que ces Eglises [les orientaux] se nomment elles-memes 

m'tJwdoxes Quelle Eglise ne se croit pas orthodoxe f et quelle 

Eglise accorde ce titre aux autres qui ne sont pas en communion avec elle ? 
Une grande et magnifique cite d'Europe se prete a une experience interes- 
sante que je propose a tons les penseurs. Un espace assez resserre y re- 
unit des Eglises de toutes les communions chretiennes, Ou y voit une 
Eglise catholique, une Eglise russe, une Eglise armenienne, une Eglise 
calviniste, une Eglise lutherienne; un peu plus loin se trouve I'Eglise 
anglicane ; il n'y manque, je crois, qu'une Eglise grecque. Dites done au 
premier homme que vous rencontrerez sur votre route : Montrez-moi VE- 
glise ORTHODOXE ? Chaque Chretien vous montrera la sienne : grande preuve 

* "" Methodii archiep. Twer., liber historicus de rebus in primitivd Ecdes. 
Christ., etc., in 4to. MosqucB, 1805. Typis sanctissimxJbsynodi. Cap vi.. sect. 
1, pag. 206, not. 2." 

7 



146 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

deja d'une orthodoxie commtme. Mais si voiis dites : Montrez-moi VE- 
glise CATHOLiQUE ? Tons repondront : La wild ! et tous montreront la 
meme. Grand et profond sujet de meditation V'—Id., pp. 192, 194. 

80. *' Je resiste au mouvement qui m'entraineroit dans la polemique : les 
principes me suffisent ; les voici. 

"1*. Le Souverain Pontife est la base necessaire, unique et exclusive du 
christianisme 

"2°. Toute Eglise qui n'est pas catholique est ^ro^e5^?a?^^e. . . . 

" Z°. La suprematie du Pope etant le dogme capital sans lequel le chris- 
tianisme ne pent subsister, toutes les Eglises qui rejettent ce dogme dont 
elles se cachent Timportance, sont d'accord, meme sans lesavoir; toutle 
reste n'est qu' accessoire, et de la vient leur afflnite dont elles ignorent la 
cause. 

*' 4°. Le premier symptome de la nullite qui frappe ces Eglises, c'est 
celui de perdre subitement et a la fois le pouvoir et le vouloir de convertir 
les hommes et d'avancer I'oeuvre divine. Elles ne font plus de conquetes, 
et meme elles affectent de les dedaigner. Elles sont steriles, et rien n'est 
plus juste: elles ont rejete Yepoux. 

"5°. Aucune d' elles ne pent maintenir dans son integrite le symbole 
qu'elle possedoit au moment de la scission. La/oi ne leur appartient 
plus 

" 6°. Dans toutes ces Eglises, les grands changemens que j'annonce com- 
menceront par le clerge 

81. '' Je n'ecris point pour disputer ; je respecte tout ce qui est .respecta- 
ble, les souverains surtout et les nations. Je ne bais que la haine. Mais 
je dis ce qui est, je dis ce qui sera, je dis ce qui doit etre ; et si les evene- 
mens contrarient ce que j'avance, j'appelle de tout mon coeur sur ma me- 
moire le mepris et les risees de la posterite." — Id.^ pp. 200-203. 

^. " Pour savoir que la religion anglicane est fausse, il n'est besoin ni 
de recherches, ni d' argumentation. EUe est jugee par intuition ; elle est 
fausse comme le soleil est lumineux. II suffit de regarder. La hierarchie 
anglicane est isolee dans le christianisme ; elle est done nuUe. II n'y a rien 
de sense a repliquer a cette simple observation. Son episcopat est egale- 
ment rejete par TEglise catbolique et par la protestante : mais s'il n'est ni 
catbolique ni protestante qu'est il done ? Rien. . . . 

83. "L'Eglise anglicane est d'ailleurs la seule association du monde, qui 
se soit declaree nulle et ridicule dans Tacte meme qui la constitue. Elle a 
proclame solenellement dans cette acte XXXIX. akticles, ni plus ni moins, 
absolument necessaires au salut, et qu'il faut jurer pour appartenir a cette 
Eglise. Mais Tun de ces articles,* declare solonellement que Dieu, en con- 
stituant son Eglise, n'a point laisse Vinfaillibilite sur la terre ; que toutes 
les Eglises se sont trompees, a conmiencer par celle de Eome; qu' elles, se 
sont trompees grossierement, meme sur le dogme, meme sur la morale ; en 
sorte qu'aucune d' elles ne possede le droit de prescrire la croyance, et que 
I'ecriture sainte est Tunique regie du chretien.t L'Eglise anglicane declare 
done a ses enfans qu'elle a bien le droit de leur commander, mais qu'ite ont 

* C'est le VI.e + Art. XIX. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 147 

droit de ne pas lui obeir. Dans le meme moment, avec la meme plume, 
avec la meme encre, sur le meme papier, elle declare le dogme et declare 
qu'elle n'a pas le droit de le declarer. J'espere que dans Pinterminable 
catalogue des folies humaines, celle-la tiendra toujours une des premieres 
places."— /6^., pp. 254-256. 

84. " Lorsque des hommes sans mission osent entreprendre de reformer 
TEglise, ils deforment leur parti et ne reforment reellement que la veritable 
Eglise qui est obligee de se defendre et de veiller sur elle-meme. C'est pre- 
cisement ce qui est arrive ; car il n'y a de veritable reforme que Timmense 
chapitre de la reforme qu'on lit dans le Concile de Trente, tandis que la 
pretendue reforme est demeuree hors de I'Eglise, sans regie, sans autorite. 
et bientot sans foi, telle que nous la voyons aujourd'hui."— /c?. pp. 270, 271, 

85. " Jamais le caractere moral des Papes n'eut d'influence sur la foi. 
Libere et Honorius, Tun et Fautre d'une eminente piete, ont eu cependant 
besoin d'apologie sur le dogme ; le bullaire d' Alexandre VI. est irreprocha- 
ble."— /<:?., p. 281. 



NOTE B. 



I had purposed to give a catena of testimonies from so-called JjOW Church 
Divines in confirmation of the statements of O'Kaye in his criticism of 
Dean Pliable' s Sermon ; but I have already so far exceeded my intended 
limits that I must confine myself to two or three extracts. 

The first is from Bishop Griswold's Tract on the Reformation : 

" Baptism, when rightly viewed, is a great comfort, and strengthens our 
faith through life. To this holy sacrament may you, who were baptized in 
childhood, continually look back as to a token of God's mercy to your soul 
through Jesus Christ; that you live in your Saviour." pp. Ill, 112. 

The next are from the admirable Tract, by Bishop Lee of Delaware, 
entitled, The Church in the House : 

" ' Go ye therefore,' is the commission given to the heralds of salvation 
and first builders of the Christian Church, ' and disciple all nations, baptiz- 
ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost.' Saith the apostle to the Galatians, ' Ye are all the children of God 
by faith in Christ Jesus ; for as many of you as have been baptized into 
Christ, have put on Christ.' May we not reasonably infer that the house- 
hold, which the apostle designated as a Church, was thus visibly marked 
with the signet of Christ? I cannot but believe that the Lord's sign was 
upon all of them, like the blood-mark upon the Israelitish dwelling when 
the first-born of Egypt were smitten; the token of faith in God's promised 
mercy."— p. 6. 

" Parents there are — alas ! too many — who trouble not themselves to 
fulfil their obligations, nor strive to train up their children in the way they 
should go. Children there are — alas! too many — who despise or barter 
away their birth-right." — p. 10. 

"Is there not manifest inconsistency in ofi'ering up a little one to God in 



148 ^ AFTERPIECE TO THE 

his sacred ordinance of baptism, and then suffering such an one to grow 
up untaught in the things which accompany salvation, ignorant of the 
solemn transaction wherein it was concerned, unimpressed with the 
peculiar obligations and privileges into which it hath been brought, to 
grow up as if it belonged to an unbelieving world, and had neither part 
nor lot in Christ."— p. 15. 

I wish I had room for the whole tract. 

The last extract shall be from a Tract by Bishop Mcllvaine, the very title 
of which, No Priest, No Sacrijice, No Altar, but Christ, compared with its 
contents, illustrates the remark quoted from Pascal on page 14, and shows 
that the difference between the two Schools in the Church on these points 
is almost entirely verbal. 

After quoting from '' Gregory Martin, a learned Romish divine of the 
sixteenth century," the bishop adds, "To the accuracy of the above, as 
to Protestants making the Eucharist only a communion of bread and wine, 
and not also a spiritual receiving of the body and blood of Christ by faith, 
I do not agree. Bat as to the. essentially Romish connexion of a literal 
altar, it is all most true." — p. 26. 

Yet, a few pages further on, after quoting from Bingham, he adds, "We 
perceive that here the tables are called altars, and certainly long before the 
form of a table was exchanged for that of an altar, the habit had grown up 
of calling it as if it were an altar. And we have no disposition to deny that 
the communion table may, in some sense, be unobjectionably called 
an altar, though in these days the writer prefers not to use the word in 
such connection."— p. 26. 



NOTE C. 

[From the (N. Y.) Church Journal of February 24, 1869.] 

"This" (the extent of the defections from the Roman Communion in 
the United States) "is confirmed by the Univers, a Roman Catholic paper. 
After stating that ' in one city alone ' (evidently meaning New York) the 
Roman Church ' loses at a single stroke twenty thousand souls ' ; the edi- 
tor proceeds : 

" ' Taking the figures for New York to be correct, and the authority that 
gives them is reliable, it is a certain fact that not less than two hundred 
thousand baptized Irish Catholic children are lost every year to the faith in 
America. How true the great Archbishop Kenrick was, as a clergyman 
wrote in those columns last week, when he maintained that the Church 
here is constantly losing more than it gains. What does it gain ? Emi- 
grants—nothing but emigrants. What does it lose ? The one case in issue 
shows that it loses every year two hundred thousand of the children of 
these same poor emigrants. What can be more unfortunate or degenerate 
than that ? Two hundred thousand Irish children— the best Catholic stock 
in the world— lost every year ! Talk of your converts ! your growth of lib- 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 149 

erty (liberality ?) towards Catholics ! Well may American Protestants be 
liberal to the Catholic Church, when the latter loses every year for their ad- 
vantage two hundred thousand (these figures are much too low), of the 
best Catholic stock that ever received baptism.' " 



NOTE D. 

The extent of the authority claimed for the Vulgate as the Standard of 
Appeal may be seen from Professor Ornsby's Note on S. John v. 7, in his 
edition of Cardinal Mai's Greek Testament (Codex Vaticanus), Dublin, 1865. 
The passage in question, he admits, " does not occur in the Vatican codex, 
and only two or three Greek codices of late date have been ascertained to 
contain it." According to Wordsworth it "is not found in A, B, G, K, 
(the four oldest Greek Manuscripts containing the Epistle), or in the MSS. 
of this Epistle— with the exception of three MSS. of comparatively recent 
date — nor in the Lectionaries, nor in the far greater majority of Versions, 
nor in the Greek Fathers of the first Four Centuries, nor in the Latin Fa- 
thers of those centuries, with the exception of a single passage in S. Cy- 
prian de Unit. Eccl. c. 5, the tenor of which is doubtful.'' When to this is 
added that the Nicene Fathers in their controversy with the Arians never 
appeal to it, which they certainly would have done, if it had been in their 
copies, it will not be thought strange that no critic of any reputation now 
receives it. 

Professor Ornsby, however, after giving all the reasons he can for think- 
ing it genuine, winds up with the following ; 

'' The above arguments are stated by way of furnishing a general answer 
to difficulties commonly urged, but such difficulties, even were the solu- 
tion less satisfactory, must always, to us be sufficiently disposed of by the 
authority of the Council of Trent, which has sanctioned, as sacred and 
canonical, the entire books of Sacred Scripture, with all their parts, as 
they were wont to be read in the Catholic Church, and are found in the old 
Vulgate Latin edition (Sess. iv. Deer, de Canonicis Scripturis) : which is 
the case with the passage before us." 

A specimen of Jiysteron proteron—m plain English, cart before the horse^ 
equal to that of those commendatory verses on Pope's Homer's Iliad which 
wind up with the prophecy, 

" That after ages will with wonder seek 
Who 'twas translated Homer into Greek ! " 

Query. — Was it Professor Ornsby at whose '' theological lecture in a - 
great Roman Catholic College " it " happened" to the " Professor of The- 
ology" to be ''present on one occasion "?— whose lecture was character- 
ized by such "marvellous definiteness " ?— who "seemed to feel that he 
had the great living Church at his side, and the whole company of heaven 
(Council of Trent ?) at his back " ?— the " attitude " of whose " students " 
was " quite as remarkable " ?— " no more hesitation on their part than on 



150 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

his"?— "one conviction" ruling "all those fi-ee (!)* but various intel- 
lects "?— Corned?/, p. 117. 

* No wonder the other professor "found himself envying that fortunate 
professor" — it is so comfortable to have the Council of Trent do one's 
thinking for one ! 



NOTE E. 

[From the Southern Churchman.'] 
"pope" liberius acting like archbishop cranmer. 

Sir,— The Romanists often taunt Protestants with the apostacy of Arch- 
bishop Cranmer. At a public discussion held at Stroud on 22d October, 
1856, between Dr. Baylee and Matthew Bridges, Esq., Dr. B. alluded to Li- 
berius, Bishop of Rome, having fallen into Arianism. Mr. Bridges thus 
attempted to defend the Pope (so-called), as we read at pp. 55 and 63 of the 
authorized Report of the Stroud Discussion of 1856 : 

" Now, Pope Liberius, my fiiend said, fell into Arianism. Well, the fact 
of the matter is just this : Liberius fell under the power of a persecutor, 
an Arian Emperor, and certainly, as an individual, when the screw of 
persecution was on him, he did seem to give a doubtful affirmation with 
regard to a particular creed. But no man is answerable for what he does 
under duress. As soon as Pope Liberius obtained his liberty, all he had 
done or even seemed to do— for it was not more than seeming— was revers- 
ed, and with his own consent the real doctrine of the Holy Trinity in unity 
was confirmed and affirmed by himself and by the Church of God." 
-(P. 55.) 

" With regard to Pope Liberius, I say again that he did not deny the di- 
vinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He fell into a great dilemma 
and difficulty ; and under the pressure and duress of circumstances he did 
as any one else might do. I can only say we must leave him in his indi- 
vidual capacity — for of course he did not err in his pontifical capacity. 
. . . . A Pope under heavy duress may do as an individual a thing 
which he certainly does not mean to do ex cathedra., that is, officially." — 
(P. 63.) 

Such is the defence of this Bishop of Rome by a Roman Catholic gen- 
tleman. Your readers will do well to mark it, and to keep it, as at least a 
tu quoque argument when Archbishop Cranmer is assailed by any Roman- 
ist or Romanizer. D. 
' November 26, 1868. 



NOTE F. 



The distribution of the Comedy was appropriately followed by that of 
a farce. A copy belonging to one of our most distinguished prelates, and 

* See a beautiful specimen of t\n.^ free thinking, from the Count De Mais- 
tre, in Note A, 16. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 151 

as " dignified," miniis the archness^ as Father Boomerang's, is now lying 
before me. On the inside of the cover, in the hand-writing of the prelate, 
Is the following: 

" This copy is one of a number sent to all the members of the House of 
Bishops, and distributed to them at the closing session in General Con- 
vention, at the Rectory of Calvary Church, New York, 1868." 

On the fly-leaf, in the same hand-writing, under date of October 28, 1868, 
are the words, "• E dono incogniti alicujus Fapizantis.'" 

The title page runs thus : 

" On the Apostolical and Infallible authority of the Pope, when teaching 
the Faithful, and on his relation to a General Council. By F. X. Weninger, 
D.D,, Missionary of the Society of Jesus. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & 
Co. Cincinnati : John P. Walslj. 1868." 

But for the D.D. appended to the author's name, it might fairly be infer- 
red from the character of the work that he was not yet out of his teens. 
As it is, we are driven to suppose either that the author was in his dotage 
or that he thought the Bishops, as well as " a large number of our dissent- 
ing brethren,"* were in theirs. Surely such stuff never before came from 
the pen of a Jesuit, "under the protection of the Immaculate Queen of 
the Apostles ! "t 

Take a specimen or two, of the 364 pages, duodecimo : 

1. "We read in the Acts of the Apostles, that ' when there was much 
disputing ' Peter, rising up, pronounced his judgment, while aU ' the mul- 
titude held their peace.' The question was settled; and James, who, as 
Bishop of Jerusalem, rose next to submit some disciplinary remarks, hum- 
bly acquiesced in the decision of Peter."— pp. 103, 104. 

When Father Weninger wrote this, he forgot that, instead of holding 
forth to a congregation of his own people, he was addressing " our dis- 
senting brethren," who have the Acts of the Apostles in their o^^ti hands, 
and can easily turn to the fifteenth chapter and read for themselves. Even 
the Pope's Infallibility could not survive the putting forth of such an ex- 
position. 

Again : 

2. " The first General Council at Nice, intended to give greater publicity 
to the condemnation of Arius, was convoked by Pope Sylvester, under the 
reign of Constantine the Great, who used his imperial authority to facili- 
tate the meeting of the Fathers. "~p. 104. 

Eusebius (Vit. Const. L. iii., c. 6), Socrates (L. i., c. 8), Theoderet (L. i., 
c. 7), and Sozomen, Father W.'s own witness (L. i., c. 17, — not 16. as Fa- 
ther W. represents it), —b1\ say that Constantine convoked the Council, and 
do not say, as, very evidently they did not believe, that the Pope had any- 
thing to do with the convoking of it ; but then they were either contempo- 
raries of the Council — Eusebius was present at it, and was, moreover, on 
terms of intimacy with Constantine — or flourished soon after, and there- 
fore there had not been time for them to get at the truth ; in this respect 
Father W. has fifteen hundred years the advantage of them.:{: 

* Introduction, p. 16. t P. 17. 

X " As to the first, which was the least important, he (Dean Blunt) 



152 AFTEKPIECE TO THE 

3. Again: Father W. tells us (pp. 33, 34) that "Hermas, a disciple of 
S. Paul's, mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, Chap, xvi., wrote a 
book entitled ' Pastor,' * * * that he was ordered to send his work to 
Clement, at Rome, that the Vicar of Christ, * =5= * the successor of S. 
Peter," might ''circulate" it, if he saw fit; and that, too, though ""at 
the time of Hermas, S. John the Evangelist was still alive." 

Now the "Pastor" was written during the Episcopate of Pius, one of 
the successors of Clement of Rome {Canon Muratorianus)^ about the date 
of which there is considerable uncertainty, some writers placing it as early 
as A.D. 127, others as late as A.D. 150. Taking the earliest date, it was at 
least 69 years after the writing of the Epistle to the Romans If then the 
author of the "Pastor" was the Hermas who was saluted by S. Paul, he 
must have been very young at the lime of the salutation, or very old when 
he wrote the book. However this may be^ certain it is that both Clement 
of Rome and S. John the Evangelist had been dead more than a quarter of 
a century. The Clement to whom he was to send one of the books — ^for 
there were two of them — must have been, therefore, some other Clement, 
and not '' the Vicar of Christ," any more than Grapte, to whom he was to 
send the other, was the Vicaress of the Immaculate Queen of the Apos- 
tles ! "* Even if it had been the Clement who was Bishop of Rome, Her- 
mas, who was an inhabitant of Rome, in sending the book to him, would 
have been merely sending it to his own Bishop, in which, certainly, there 
would have been nothing strange, even though S. John the Evangelist were 
then living. So much for Father W.'s proof from Hermas. 

Again : 

4. " S. Ignatius, likewise a Bishop of the Apostolic age, and a disciple of 
S. John's, states in his letter to the Romans, that the doctrinal decisions 
of the successors of S. Peter are authoritative. ' Qum docendo prcecipi- 
tis: "—p. 33. 

5. Ignatius says not one syllable about " the doctrinal decisions of the 
successors of S. Peter." His Epistle is addressed to the Roman Christians 
at large, not to the Bishop of Rome, except as one of them ; and accord- 
ingly he uses the second person plural^ which was never used, in his day, 
in addressing an individual, even though a king or a bishop : that was the 
ecclesiastical usage of a later day. He is on his way to Rome, to be thrown 
to the wild beasts, and he entreats the Roman Christians to make their 
practise correspond to their teachings, qucB docentes jJrcecipistis, and not 

thought that no adequate proof had ever been given, or could be given, of 
the integrity of their succession. The evidence which centuries had failed 
to complete would never be completed at all ! ''—Com. Conv. p., 88. 

*"WhenI" — the old v.-oman who appeared, in a vision, to Hermas in 
his own house in Rome— "finish all the words, all the elect will then be- 
come acquainted with them through you. Yoa will write, therefore, two 
books, and you will send the one to Clement, and the other to Grapte. 
And Clement will send his to foreign countries, for permission has been 
granted him so to do." Whatneedhad he of " permission," if he was the 
Vicar of Christ? Has not " the Vicar of Christ" ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion over "foreign countries " ? " And Grapte will admonish the widows 
and orphans. But j^ou will read the words in this city, along with the 
presbyters who preside over the Church."— Pa5. L. i., Vis. ii., c. 4. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 153 

try to keep him, as he feared they would, from the crown of martyr- 
dom. 

Yet again: 

5. " S. Polycarp, the disciple of S. Ignatius, purposely went to Rome to 
learn from Pope S. Victor, what rule he was to follow in fixing the time for 
the celebration of Easter."— pp. 33, 34. 

5. Polycarp was the disciple, not of S. Ignatius, but of S. John the Evan- 
gelist, and he never ''went to Rome to learn from Pope S. Victor on the 
subject of Easter, or on any other subject, for the very good reason that 
Victor was not Bishop of Rome till long after Polycarp's martyrdom. S. 
Irenaeus, who was S. Polycarp's disciple, and therefore probably knew as 
much about his journey to Rome as Father W., though he had not had as 
much time for accumulating proof of what it was undertaken for, gives, in 
a letter to Victor, whom,. by the way, he withstood, as S. Paul withstood 
S. Peter, because he was to be blamed, the following account of it: " 

" When the blessed Polycarp went to Rome in the time of Anicetus and 
they had a little difference likewise among themselves respecting other 
matters, they immediately were reconciled, not disputing much with one 
another on this head," namely, of the time of keeping Easter. "For 
neither would Anicetus persuade Polycarp not to observe it, and neither 
did Polycarp persuade Anicetus to observe it ; which things being so they 
communed with each other." Ecce episcopum Romanum primitivum. O 
si sic omnes ! 

Once more : 

6. *' Other portions of the Saint's writings (S. C3T)rian) are, if possible, 
even more explicit still. In a letter, addressed to a certain Anthony, he 
identifies the Pope with the whole Church. ' You desire me to forward 
your epistle to Cornelius, because you wish to satisfy His Holiness that 
you live in communion with Him, that is, with the Church.' ' Te secum, 
hoc est, cum Ecclesia Catholica communicare.' " — p. 37. 

Suppose Father W., to write to his Metropolitan the "Archbishop of 
Cincinnati," Tecum— ov rather, to give the modern ecclesiastical plural of 
dignity — vohiscum, hoc est^ cum. Ecclesia Romana communico^ would he be 
"identifying" the Archbishop with the whole Roman Church? If so, 
where would be the Pope ? 

There are plenty of passages in the other Latin Fathers, of similar pur- 
port; Rome being the only Apostolic See of the Latin Church, it was 
natural that they should become accustomed to speak of it as the Apostolic 
See. Among the Greeks, on the other hand, there being two Apostolic 
Sees, Antioch, and Alexandria, it was equally natural that they should not 
become accustomed to speak of either of the two as the Apostolic See. If 
any of them in speaking of the See of Rome used language similar to that 
of the Latin Fathers, it is either because they have an oriental fondness 
for rhetoric, which the modern advocates of Rome have an occidental 
fondness for turning into logic, or because, like Theodoret of Cyprus * or 

* " Having been deposed and excommunicated by the local Synod of 
Ephesus, and thrown into prison by order of the Emperor, he laid his cause 



154 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

Stephen of Larissa,* they have an axe to grind, and think it good policy to 
speak well of the grindstone. Hoiv Rome became that grindstone, non 
exsors ipsa secandi^ the student of Ecclesiastical History and of the history 
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire will be at no loss to deter- 
mine. 

He who has any doubts about the Papacy being a gradual and very slow 
development will find those doubts resolved by referring to Notes A, 37, 38, 
G, and H, 1, 2, 3. 



NOTE G. 



" Among other ignorant assertions which have been common of late, it 
has been said that popes have never acknowledged themselves subject to 
human sovereigns, and that Christian sovereigns have never claimed au- 
thority over popes. What then does Agatho," in his letter to the Emperor 
Constantine Pogonatus, Concilia (Mansi), tom. xi. p. 233 seqq., "mean by 
' prompta obsequentia,' ' obedientiae satisfactio,' ' studiosa obedientia,' 
'noster famulatus,' 'hsec servilis vestri serenissimi principatus Romana 
urbs,' ' obedientia quam debuimus,' ' flexo mentis poplite suppliciter ad 
mansuetudinem semper intentam clementiam deprecamur,' 'imperialis 
vestra benignitas clementer jubens hortata est, et nostra pusillitas, quod 
jussum est, obsequenter implevit.' This exactly agrees with S. Gregory 
the Great (lib. iii. ep. 65) : 'Ego quidem jnssioni subjectus * * * qugg 
debui exsolvi, qui et imperatori obedientiam prsebui, et pro Deo quod 
sensi minime tacui.' The Novels of Justinian leave no doubt about the 
tone of the imperial mandates. ' We therefore command the most blessed 
archbishops and patriarchs, that is of the elder Rome, Constantinople,' 
&c. — Nov. 123, 3. Adoratio was paid to the emperors by popes, and the 
latter continued the practice even when freed from the rule of the eastern 
emperors. Charlemagne was adored by Pope Leo. 'Ab eodem pontifice 
more antiquorum principum adoratus est.' — Eginhard, ad an. 801. Cf. 
Annal. Laurist. and Boeta Sax. ad an. The adoratio was an abject form of 
submission introduced from the East in the worst days of Rome. The best 
Pagan emperors refused it, but Dioclesian made it compulsory, and Con- 
stantine retained it. It consisted in prostration before the emperor, and 
kissing his feet and other parts of his person. Pope Adrian I. alludes to 
this ceremony (Ep. 56 to Constantine and Irene) when he describes himself 
as ' tanquam prtesentialiter humo prostratus et vestris Deo directis vesti- 
giis provolutus.' 

" The popes swore allegiance to the emperors. The biographer of the 
popes records one instance as follows: — 'In eadem ecclesia [S. Petri] 

before the Holy See, and sought redress for his grievances, at the hands of 
the Pope, whom he styled the Father of Christians, and the judgei?i matters 
of faithy—Weninger, p. 51. 

* '' Stephen, the Metropolitan of Larissa in Thessaly (■to32), maltreated 
by Epiphanius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, determined to expose his 
grievances to the Pope."— /6?. p. 56. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 155 

sedentes pariter turn (tarn?) beatissimus pontifex quam magiius rex et 
omnes arcliiepiscopi fidelitatem Lothario magno imperatori semper augusto 
promiserunt."' — Anastas. in vit. Sergii." — The Condemnation- of Pope Hono- 
riiLS. By P. Le Page Benouf. London, 1868. pp. 1, 2. 



NOTE H. 



The following extracts are from a work entitled '' Christendom's Divi- 
sions, Part I. ; By Edmund S. Ffoulkes. London, 1865.''— Mr. Ffoulkes 
was a clergyman of the Church of England, hut went over to the Church of 
Rome nearly twenty years ago. 

1. ''What account is to he given of these ecclesiastical prerogatives 
which the bishops of Rome claimed gradually ; and neither orthodox nor 
heretics really disputed, except in their exercise ? If they were based on 
divine right, why were they dormant so long, and only gradually brought 
out ? What other ordinance of the gospel is there that did not come into 
force at once, as soon as instituted? Baptism and the breaking of bread 
commenced on the very day of Pentecost. Deacons, priests, and bishops 
assuredly did not enter upon some of their respective functions in the first, 
and others in the third or fourth century ; nor were there any essential 
articles of the lav>^, or the doctrine of Christ, from which the first converts 
were dispensed. If the primacy of the see of Rome was a fundamental 
part of the polity of the Church, why were the rights of metropolitans and 
patriarchs defined first, and when the Church was one, while those of the 
papacy remained in suspense till there was a rival to contest them. Above 
all, how has it happened that the unity of the Church was never impaired 
while its destinies were under the control of the emperors, but rent almost 
immediately, from the time that they began to be more exclusively con- 
trolled by the popes ? Obviously enough, it is not every theory of develop- 
ment that will reconcile th«se contradictions." — Christendom's Divisions ^ 
pp. 27, 28. 

2. " In its very divided state, it attests the want both of a supreme head 
upon earth, and of one head, to be one again. 

3. "I am recording a fact, not advocating a principle, in making this 
statement. I sincerely believe myself, that a church without endowments, 
without civil privileges, perfectly detached from the world, hotly persecu- 
ted from time to time, without any distinctions of precedence amongst its 
ministers outside the sanctuary, without any supreme head in or out of the 
sanctuary but One, who is there worshipped in faith as ever present, is the 
loftiest and most evangelical idea of a church by far ; and that, to a certain 
extent, this was actually exhibited in the Church of the Fathers — at least 
of the three first centuries. But I greatly doubt whether this is not a 
church more fit for the cloister, and one to which the world would never 
have been drawn or belonged."" — Id., p. 35. 

4. " To what scandals did that meeting, which was to have come off be- 
tween Gregory XIL, and Benedict XIII., at Savona, give rise— so humilia- 



156 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

ting to their mutual supporters, tliat the cardinals of both obediences 
combined in holding the Council of Pisa to get rid of them both ? What a 
phenomenon was that Council, assembled without a head; and to this 
day neither approved nor reprobated, as Bellarmine says, though Alexander 
v., was indebted to it for his election ! ''—Id., p. 132. 

5. '' The Council of Pisa was convened, as I have said, by no pope at all ; 
the Council of Constance deposed the pope by whom it was convened,* as 
well as his rivals." t— /c?., p. 133. 

6. ''The Emperor Sigismund, who was present at the Council of Con- 
stance, in A. D. 1424, heard three popes deposed: and one, who was neither 
priest nor bishop, X elected unanimously to the highest post in the Church." 
—Id., p. 83. 

7. '' Martin V., who in his first Bull speaks of ' the canonical deposition 
of his predecessor by the definitive sentence of that council,' was himself 
elected conditionally ; for in its third session (March 25, A.D. 1415), the 
assembled fathers had declared that they would not separate till not only 
the schism had been healed, but the whole Church, head and members, 
reformed in faith and manners."— /cZ., p. 133. 

8. '' 'We know that in this holy seat there have been many enormities 
now for some years : abuses in spiritual things, excesses in what has been 
ordained — all things, in short, perverted. The very things alluded to by 
that blessed pontiff (Chrysostom) are those which we have mourned over in 
Alexander YI. ; nor is it surprising, if disease should have found its way 
from the head to the members— from supreme pontifts to other prelates of 
inferior grade. All of us prelates, that is ecclesiastics, have turned aside 
every one to his own way ; nor has there been now for a long while any 
that would do good — no, not one. * . * * Still, let no one wonder if he 
should not see every defect or abuse removed by us at once ; for the disease 
is too deep-seated — not simple but manifold and complicate — whose cure 
can only be attempted step by step ; and what is most serious and danger- 
ous must be taken in hand first, lest, wishing to reform all things simulta- 
neously, we throw all things into confusion.' ^'—Instructions of Adrian VI. 
to Chieregato, ap. Raynald. Contin. ad Baron, A. D. 1522, § 10.— Id., pp. 
145, 146. 

9. " Behind, and besides all this, there was the undeniable fact of im- 
mense corruption in the Church, so great and manifold as to shake the 
belief of men in her divine credentials. Luther both saw and felt it." — 
Id., p. 127. 

10. " In themselves, these decrees (of the Council of Trent) on reforma- 
tion are one and all of them excellent. It is not for what they contain so 
much as for what they do not contain, that any reasonable exception to 

* Alexander Y. t Gregory XII., and Benedict XIII. 

+ '• ' Otto Colonna, * * * who took the name of Martin Y. * * 
was seen mounted on a white horse caparisoned with scarlet : he was clad 
in the pontifical robes, with the mitre on his head, although he was as yet 
neither priest nor bishop. * * * The next day he was ordained deacon, 
the day following priest, and the third day bishop.' Rohrbacker, E. H. 
vol. xxi. pp. 169, 170." 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 157 

them can be made. Compared with the acknowledged abuses* which they 
were designed to remedy, their tone is much more deprecatory than threat- 
ening. Against the teachers of false doctrine the number of anathemas 
pronounced by the Council is upwards of 130; against evil doers a:id mal- 
pratices of all sorts it is under 12." — Icl.^ pp. 163, 164. 

11. ''Even the decisions of the Council of Trent failed to put down con- 
troversy upon points of detail which it had left open— no less than the con- 
fession of Augsburg. There were Molinists and Jansenists, Galileans and 
Ultramontanes amongst Catholics ; to be set against Arminians and Con- 
tra-Remoustrants, Puritans and High Churchmen amongst Protestants."— 
Id. p. 171. 

12. "Just while Mr. Aymon was holding these conferences in Paris, we 
find Fenelon addressing a secret memoir to Clement XI., t with whom he 
was continually corresponding, in which three French cardinals, two arch- 
bishops, twelve bishops, all the Dominicans, all the Benedictines in France, 
the discalced Carmelites, the French branch of the Oratory, learned men 
among the Capuchins and elsewhere, are charged with secret or avowed 
Jansenism. ' There are some good bishops left, to be sure,' he adds ; 'but 
the greater number, hesitating and uncertain, range themselves blindly on 
whichever side the King may take.' 

13. " So matters went on, getting worse and worse, till under the Re- 
gency they had grown incorrigible. * * * The Bull ' Unigentus ' added 
to the ferment which it was designed to put down. Five years from its 
publication in France, the Galilean Church had all but separated from Rome, 
possibly to form a coalition against Rome Avith England."— /<:?. pp. 178,179. 

14. " Of the other canons (of the 4th Lateran Council, under Innocent 
III., A.D. 1215) * * * the 21st has proved to be the all-important one. 
It enjoins the faithful of both sexes and mature age to make their confes- 
sions once a year to their own priest, and communion at Easter at least." 
—Id. p. 82. 

15. '' In illustration of what is here advanced let me refer to the whole of 
that earnest and instructive chapter, headed ' The History of Communion,' 
in the work on Communion^ by Father Dalgairns, particularly from p. 170 ; 

*" Let me illustrate this by a single instance. * * * Ferdinand I. 
reopened the question in February, 1564 (see Raynald, A.D. 1564, Nos. 
28-32) ; and on his decease, Maximilian II., indignant that it should have 
been withheld through Philip, reenforced his demand by this appeal to 
facts : ' Quis enim non videt et deplorat, inter Catholicos etiam sacerdotes 
per German iam regnaque et dominia Coesarese majestatis, ac serenissimi 
Principis Caroli, Archiducis Austrise, nullum ijro'pe cad certe inter- 
multos vix unum reperiri, qui vere coelibatum agac: sed omnes fere, 
neglectis et spretis sahiberrimis sacrorum conciliorum et canonum vete- 
rum et novorum constitutionibus, quarum plane uullus amodo usus nee 
cura est, notorios esse concubinarios, vel tacltos etiam maritos ; quinimo 
plerosque non una concubina contentari, sed plures simul alere ; multos 
etiam propter solius coelibatus necessitatem ad alteram partem deficere ; 
nonnullos etiam semel ductam repudiare, et toties quotie:= aiiam subdu- 
cere solere, cum maximo animarum suarum discrimine, et laicorum scan- 
dalo.' (Cardinal Granvelle's Papers^ ed. Weiss. Paris, 1S49, 4to., vol. ix. p. 
426 et seq.) " 

t A.D. 1705, Rohrbacker's Hist, de VE. vol. xxvi. pp. 462-3. 



158 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

where, speaking of the great Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, he says : * It 
was precisely then, when the world was at her feet, that the Church was 
compelled to enact penalties against her children who did 7iot communi- 
cate once a year, and to limit her commands to an Easter communion, be- 
cause she durst not require more.'' " — Id. p. 95, n. 

16. " 'All that it is permitted to me to say is, that it behoves us to pray, 
and pray fervently : for, in the confusion and laxity into which all ranks 
have fallen, it is not human wisdom or prudence that can suffice to rees- 
tablish all things in their proper and normal position. The Omnipotent 
arm of God is indispensable. Among pastors there is a very small number 
indeed animated with a real zeal for the salvation of souls. Religious es- 
tablishments are all of them more or less relaxed : there is little or no ob- 
servance of rules or of obedience to be found among them. The state of 
the secular clergy is something deplorable. On every ground there should 
be a general reform amongst ecclesiastics, in order that hereafter some 
check may be opposed to the immense corruption of manners that one sees 
amongst laymen.' "—(Letter of S. Alphonso Liguori to Cardinal Castelli,* 
A.D. 1774.)— /c?., pp. 175, 176. 

17. " It was the system that was corrupt : and its corruptions were too 
deep-seated for the best andholiest of men— sovereign pontiffs though they 
were, or were supposed to be, over and above — to stem. It defied alike the 
zeal of Innocent XI., the spotless character of Innocent XII., the pious as- 
pirations of Benedict XIII., and the colossal erudition and indefatigable 
exertions of perhaps the wisest Pope that ever sat — Benedict XIV. From 
the acts of the Lateran Council of A.D. 1725 alone, we may judge of the 
low level to which matters had fallen. Their principal aim was to enforce 
the observance of the decrees of the Council of Trent, not by Galilean 
France but by Ultramontane Italy. It would appear from their language 
that even the profession of the creed of Pius IV. had very generally ceased 
to be exacted from ecclesiastics of high and low degree, on their admission 
tD benefices ; and that in many quarters no diocesan seminaries had been 
established, or diocesan synods held, in conformity with what Trent had 
ordained. * * * all the energy of a Hildebrand would have scarce suf- 
ficed now." — Id. p. 174. 

18. "Pius IV. in vain importuned the Council of Trent, while treating 
of legitimate bishops, to declare 'that the bishops assumed and created by 
or under Elizabeth were not lawful bishops. 't Strong opinions had been 
already expressed, in that very session, ' that it was certain that bishops 
did not depend on the Pope as regards order— that it was doubtful whether 
they depended on him as regards jurisdiction. '$ And no decision was ever 
come to by the Council on that head."§— /c?., p. 200. 

19. " 'Were it permitted to establish degrees of importance amongst 

* " This remarkable letter I can find nowhere but in the extracts given, 
torn. xi. pp. 273-5, Hist, de VEglise de Berault-Bercastel, par M. le Baron 
Henrion— where it is said that a good deal of it has beeii suppressed from 
delicacy."— 7tiJ., p. 176, n. 

t Sess. xxiii. Waterworth, p. ccxvii. 

X Id., p. ccxiv. § Id., p. cclii. 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 159 

things of Divine institution,' he says, ^ I sliould place the hierarchy before 
dogma— to so great a degree is the former indispensable to the mainterjance 
of the faith. One may cite in favour of this theory a splendid experience 
which for three centuries has been conspicuous in the eyes of all Europe : 
I mean the Anglican Churchy tvhich has preserved a dignity and weight 
absolutely foreign to all other Reformed Churches entirely because the Eng 
lish good sense has preserved the hierarchy.'' ''* — Id. p. 200. 

20. "Now on t\i.Q fact of Archbishop Parker's consecration— and of all 
beyond him in the series, there has never been any question at all— I can- 
not imagine there being two opinions. It is as w^ell authenticated as most, 
and better than a great many, facts accepted as such ; and w^ho amongst 
ourselves can pretend to have tested it more carefully than Dr. Lingard ? I 
quote his results : 

21. " ' Six theologians and canonists were consulted, who returned an 
opinion, that in a case of such urgent necessity, the Queen possessed the 
power of supplying every defect, through the plenitude of her ecclesiasti- 
cal' — it is not said spiritual — 'authority as the head of the Church.' In 
conformity with this answer a commission with a sanatory clause was is- 
sued, and four of the commissioners — Barlow, the deprived Bishop of Bath, 
and Hodgkins, once suffragan of Bedford (who had both been consecrated 
according to the Catholic Pontifical), and Scory, the deprived Bishop of 
Chichester, and Coverdale, the deprived Bishop of Exeter (who had both 
been consecrated according to the Reformed ordinal) — proceeded to con- 
firm the election of Parker, and then to consecrate him after the form 
adopted towards the cIosq of the reign of Edward VI. A few days later, 
Parker, as archbishop, confirmed the election of two of those by whom his 
own election had been confirmed— of Barlow to the see of Chichester, and 
of Scory to that of Hereford ; and then assuming them for his assistants — 
for three bishops were requisite by law — confirmed and consecrated all the 
other prelates elect. t 

*De Maistre, Lettre a une Dame Eusse, vol. ii., p. 285., Lettres et Opus, 
ined. 

t ''Hist. vol. vi., p. 17, 8vo., ed. 1849. Note C, in the Appendix, has as com- 
plete a review of the whole proceeding as could be wished. It shows, 
first, how the legality of Parker's consecration was subsequently affirmed 
by express Act of Parliament ; secondly, how the Nag's Head fable origin- 
ated, and its utter improbability ; thirdly, it proves the fact of Parker's con- 
secration, and the whole manner of it, from Parker's own Register, his pri- 
vate diary, and a Zurich letter, dated Jan. 6, 1560— from all which it appears 
that it took place on Dec. 17, 1559 ; then, fourthly, it points out the nonex- 
istence of any record of Barlow's own consecration; yet shows that to be 
no valid objection; lastly, and fifthly, it points out the more formidable 
difficulty, whether the Lambeth rite was of itself sufficient to constitute a 
Christian bishop ? What actually was done was, ' omitting part of it ' 
(that is, of the ordinal then used), ' they consecrated the new archbishop 
in the following manner — Placing their hands upon his head, they admon- 
ished him tlius", "Remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is 
in thee by imposition of hands, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear 
but of power, and of love, and of soberness." How. it was asked, could 
this monition make a bishop ? It bore no immediate connection with the 
episcopal character.' Here, if at all, is contained the real objection. But 
the whole office should be read through : it is a different form, certainly, 



160 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

22. " Was it the effect of accident that two of the consecrators should 
have belonged to the old, and two to the new rite ; and that Parker should 
have afterwards selected one of the old and one of the new rite as his assist- 
ants ? I venture to add these further considerations to what I have appended 
from Dr. Lingard in the note. Coverdale and Scory had, it is true, been 
consecrated according to the Eeforraed ordinal : but their consecrators 
were Cranmer and Hodgkins, who had been consecrated according to the 
Pontifical. Whatever the form used may have been in either case, it is to 
be presumed that those who were true bishops themselves intended to 
make those whom they consecrated exactly what they had themselves been 
made by consecration — or true bishops. And where has the Church pre- 
scribed any one form by default of which Episcopal ordination is rendered 
invalid ? Jurisdiction is another point on Avhich, as we have seen, the Coun- 
cil of Trent itself shrank from pronouncing even in their case. * * * 

23. " One more circumstance remains to be noticed which, apparently, 

from that now in use in the Church of England ; yet even so, ought not the 
existing form to be held as evidence of the intention of the other? Com- 
pare the existing Book of Common Pimyer with the Two Books in Edward 
yi.'s reign (Oxtord, 1841), pp. 417-22." 

The part between single commas in the above note isLingard's language 
as given by Ffoulkes ; the remainder is Ffoulkes's abstract of Lingard's 
statement. The following account is from Lingard himself; it will be 
found in the ISTote at the end of vol. vii., pp. 293, 294, First American, from 
the last London edition. Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey, 1827: 

'•The facts that are really known are the following: The Queen, from 
the beginning of her reign, had designed Parker for the archbishopric. 
After a long resistance he gave his consent ; and ^ conge d'elire was issued 
to the dean and chapter, July 18, 1559. He was chosen Aug. 1. On Sept. 
9 the queen sent her mandate to Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, Bourne of 
Bath and Wells, Pool of Peterborough, Kitchin of Llandaff, Barlow, the 
deprived bishop of Bath under Mary, and Scory of Chichester, also de- 
prived under Mary, to confirm and consecrate the archbishop elect. (Rym. 
XV, 541.) Kitchin had conformed: and it was hoped that the other three, 
who had not been present in Parliament, might be induced to imitate his 
example. All these, however, refused to othciate ; and in consequence the 
oath of supremacy was tendered to them (Rym. xv. 545) ; and their refusal 
to take it was followed by deprivation. In these circumstances no conse- 
cration took place : but three months later (Dec. 6), the queen sent a sec- 
ond mandate, directed to Kitchin, Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, the deprived 
Bishop of Exeter under Mary ; John, Suff"ragan of Bedford ; John, Sufira- 
gaii of Thetford, and Bale, Bishop of Ossory, ordering them, or any four of 
them to confirm and consecrate the archbishop elect ; but with an addition- 
al clause, by which she, of her supreme royal authority, supplied whatever 
deficiency there might be according to the statutes of the realm, or the 
laws of the Church, either in the acts done by them, or in the person, state, 
or faculty of any of them, such being the necessity of the case and the ur- 
gency of"^the time (Rym. xv. 549). Kitchin again appears to have declined 
the oflice. But BarloV, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkins, suftVagan ot Bed- 
ford, confirmed the election on the 9th; and consecrated Parker on the 
17th. The ceremony was performed, though with a little variation, ac- 
cording to the ordinal of Edward VI. Two of the consecrators. Barlow 
and Hodgkins, had been ordained bishops according to the Roman pontifi- 
cal, the other two according to the Reformed Ordinal. (Wilk. Con. iv. 
198.) Of this consecration on the l\th ol December, there can be no doubt: 
perhaps in the interval between the refusal of the Catholic prelates, and 
the performance of the ceremony, some meeting may have taken place at 
the Nag's Head, which gave rise lo the sior}-." 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 161 

can never have crossed the mind of Dr. Lingard. Hugh Ciirwin, Arch- 
bishop of Dublin, had been appointed to his see by Queen Mary, having 
been consecrated according to the forms of the Pontifical in S. Paul's 
Church, London, on September 8, A.D., 1555. Now he it was who conse- 
crated, in A.D. 1562, what may be called Elizabethan bishops for Ireland.* 
Can it be supposed for a moment that he would not have been summoned 
to consecrate Parker, had those six theologians and canonists who were 
consulted imagined themselves to be in any real difficulty for valid conse- 
crators? * * * 

24. " Thus, that Parker was consecrated, and that those who consecrated 
him were believed at the time to be canonically competent to do so, and 
that their intention must have been to confer episcopal ordination, is I 
think no more than we are bound to concede. And is there any one point 
in History, from that time forth, when the Church of England either 
doubted of the true character of her episcopate, or lost it, or was indifl:erent 
to its preservation as such? Plainly no such case has ever occurred. On 
the contrary, it has never ceased to be her special boast from the first : she 
has continually been asked to impart it to others who had it not ; and in 
one case it has been actually transmitted to another country speaking the 
same language — descendants, in short, of the mother-country, through one 
of her off'shoots. * * * 

25. " Whatever others may have thought of it, in the mind of the Church 
of England there never can have been any doubt of the regular and un- 
broken character of its own Apostolical Succession, and of its intrinsic 
value, from the beginning. The grounds on which its orders have been 
denied in practice by the Roman Catholic hierarchy from the first — no less 
—have never been authoritatively declared. As for the mere practice of 
doing so, there might be set over against it the practice of the Greek 
Church, as distinguished, however, from that of Russia, which invariably 
reordains, and even rebaptizes, any — though they may have received all 
their orders immediately from the Pope — who come over to it from the 
West:'— Id., pp. 201-206. 

26. " S. Thomas, in the third part of his elaborate work,t has not failed 
to consider the question whether heretical, schismatical, and excommuni- 
cate priests have power to consecrate the Holy Eucharist ; and his reply is 
in the affirmative. Those who have been ordained within the Church have 
received their power lawfully ; which afterwards, however, should they be 
separated from the Church by heresy, schism, or excommunication, they 
can no longer exercise lawfully. Those who have been ordained thus sep- 
arated, have received their power unlawfully, and any exercise of it is 
unlawful. Their consecration of the Holy Eucharist is therefore a true 
consecration ; but it is Unprofitable, and not without taint of sin, analogous 
to the case of those who have been unworthy communicants. 

27. " One or other of these, clearly, was the formal position of those four 
bishops who consecrated Parker ; and of Parker still more, who was con- 

* Sir James Ware's Hist. vol. 1. p. 94, ed. Harris. 
t Sum. Theol. p. iii. q. Ixxxii. art. vii. 



163 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

secrated by them. The fact of their separation from the Church is no less 
patent than that they had deliberately embraced that state with their eyes 
open, for the reign of Mary was only just over. Their orders, unimpeach- 
able as they may be in point of succession, were as indisputably given and 
received in schism in point of fact. There can be no such thing, not 
merely with reference to the Church, but to the organization of society 
generally, as schism, if theirs was not." — Id.^ pp. 222, 223. 

This last paragraph Mr. Ffoulkes has since recanted, as will be .seen by 
the first of the following extracts from his Letter to the Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop Manning, a pamphlet of eighty-four pages (Amer. Ed.) bearing the 
title of " The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed," — the former being the 
" creed of Nicsea and Constantinople without the 'Filioque,'" the latter 
" that of the Spanish Reccared and the Frankish Charles, containing the 
addition": 

28. " I adijiit that up to the time of my inquiring into the true causes of 
the earlier schism between the East and West, I was not prepared to look 
upon the position of the Church of England as favorably as I do now ; be- 
cause I regarded it. as the efi'ect of schism — wailful and deliberate schism — 
on her part in separating from the communion to which she had been so 
long bound, and over which, with the full concurrence of her clergy and 
laity for ages, Rome ruled supreme. I expressed this unhesitatingly three 
years back in the first part of my book, and am far from intending to re- 
tract all that I said then ; but having since discovered the general system 
of Church government in w^hich England, in common with all other west- 
ern nations, had up to that time acquiesced, to have been based upon for- 
geries, and opposed to the genuine code of the Church, I as unhesitatingly 
recognize the right — nay, the duty paramount — of every local church to 
revolt against such a concatenation of spurious legislation as this, and 
scattering to the wdnds every link of the false chain that had enthralled it 
hitherto, to return to the letter and spirit of those canons, stamped with 
the assent of the whole Church, and never repealed" (pp. 75, 76). 

29. "I am w^ell aware, my lord, that this last inference of mine must cut 
at the very root of your position in England, should it prove correct ; but 
as I have lived in the investigation of these questions for the last twenty 
years and upwards, j'-ou will scarce accuse me of being influenced by per- 
sonal considerations in getting to their final solution. On the contrary, 
my wish is to give everybody the fullest credit for a sensitive conscience 
that I claim myself" (p. 77). 

30. '> Where, indeed, is the part of Christendom seriously purporting to 
call itself the Catholic Church in these days ? Roman Catholic, Anglo- 
Catholic, Episcopal, Orthodox, or Presbyterian, all in their degree seem 
influenced by some hidden spell to abstain from arrogating to themselves 
or attributing to each other the epithet of ''Catholic" without qualifica- 
tions, as it is applied to the Church in the Creed. Test existing phenomena 
by this theory, and the results are plain and Straightforward. One of its 
logical results would be that the administration of the Christian Sacra- 
ments might be frequented with profit outside the pale of the Roman com- 
munion. Is this confirmed by experience ? My lord, my ow^n experience, 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 163 

which is confined to the single communion in which you formerly bore 
ofiice, that of the Church of England, says emphatically that it is ; and 
there is no canon or ordinance that I know of forbidding me to maintain 
it. You have preceded me yourself in expatiating on the workings of the 
Holy Spirit in the Church of England with your accustomed eloquence, and 
have not hesitated to attribute to its members many graces in virtue of the 
sacrament of Baptism which you allow they administer on the whole 
validly ; but there you stop. I feel morally constrained to go further still. 
If I had to die for it, I could not possibly subscribe to the idea that the 
Sacraments to which I am admitted week after week in the Roman com- 
munion—Confession and the Holy Eucharist, for instance— confer any 
graces, any privileges, essentially difi"erent from what I used to derive from 
those same Sacraments, frequented with the same dispositions, in the 
Church of England. On the contrary, I go so far as to say that, comparing 
one with another strictly, some of the most edifying communions that I 
can remember in all my life were made in the Church of England, and 
administered to me by some that have since submitted to be reordained in 
the Church of Rome ; a ceremony, therefore, which, except as qualifying 
them to undertake duty there, I must consider superfluous. Assuredly, so 
far as the registers of my own spiritual life carry me, I have not been able 
to discover any greater preservatives from sin, any greater incentives to 
holiness, in any that I have received since ; though in saying this I am far 
from intending any derogation to the latter. I fi-equent them regularly ; I 
prize them exceedingly ; I have no fault to find with their administration 
or their administrators in general. All that I was ever taught to expect 
from them they do for me, due allowance being made for my own short- 
comings. Only I cannot possibly subscribe to the notion of my having 
been a stranger to their beneficial effects till I joined the Roman communion, 
and I deny that it was my faith alone that made them what they were to 
me before then, unless it is through my faith alone that they are what they 
are to me now. Holding myself that there are realities attaching to the 
Sacraments of an objective character, I am persuaded, and have been more 
and more confirmed in this conviction as I have grown older, that the Sa- 
craments administered in the Church of England are realities, objective 
realities, to the same extent as any that I could now receive at your hands ; 
so that you yourself therefore consecrated the Eucharist as truly when 
you were vicar of Lavington, as you have ever done since. This may 
or may not be your own belief; but you shall be one of my foremost 
witnesses to its credibility, for I am far from basing it on the experi- 
ences of my o^vn soul. My lord, I have always been accustomed to look 
upon the Sacraments as so many means of grace, and to estimate their 
value, not by the statements of theologians, but by their effects on myself, 
my neighbors, and mankind at large. And the vast difference between the 
moral tone of society in the Christian and the pagan worlds, I attribute 
not merely to the superiority of the rule of life prescribed in the Gospels, 
but to the inherent grace of the Sacraments enabling and assisting 
us to keep it to the extent we do. Taking this principle for my 
guide, I have been engaged constantly since I joined the Roman 



164 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

communion in instituting comparisons between members of the Church 
of England and members of the Church of Eome generally, and be- 
tween our former and our present selves in . particular : or between 
Christianity in England and on the Continent ; and the result in each case 
has been to confirm me in the belief which I have expressed already, that 
the notion of the Sacraments exercising any greater influence upon the 
heart and life in the Church of Rome than in the Church of England, ad- 
mitting the dispositions of those who frequent them to be the same in both 
cases, is not merely preposterous, but as contrary both to faith and fact, 
as is the opinion that the Pope is Antichrist and the man of Sin. My lord, 
there is no person in his sober senses who could affirm that you, for in- 
stance, began to be a devout, earnest, intelligent follower of Christ, an 
admirable master of the inner and the hidden life, a glorious example of 
self-sacrifice, a deep expounder of revealed mysteries and Gospel truths, 
when you embraced the Roman communion ; or that all those graces 
which you exhibited previouslj'- in the sight of men could be deduced from 
the one rite which you received unconsciously as a child, counteracted by 
all the bad and unwholesome food on which, according to this hypothesis, 
you must have lived ever afterwards, 

31. "In the same way there is no ordinary person in his sober senses 
who could afi'ect to discover any fundamental change for the better in 
you, morally or religiously, now from what you were then. There are 
some, on the contrary, to my knowledge, of your existing flock who 
profess that they have not half the liking for the sermons which they 
hear you deliver as Archbishop of Westminister that they have for the 
dear old volumes which you published as Archdeacon of Chichester, 
as fresh and full of fragrance to their instincts as ever. And I have heard 
the same said of another, whose parochial sermons, hailed as a master- 
piece on their first appearance, have just burst forth into a second spring. 
People say that the sermons which ci-devant Anglican clergymen of note 
preached formerly read so much more natural than any that they have since 
delivered from Roman Catholic pulpits. They argued impartially, then, as 
men whose sole desire it was both to get at the truth, and uphold it at any 
cost : they never feared looking facts in the face, and were as little given 
to exaggerate those that made for them, as to keep out of sight or evade by 
subterfuge those which they could neither excuse nor explain. They were 
never tired of confessing their own sins or shortcomings. In a word, their 
tone was frank, honest, and manly. Now, they may preach with the same 
energy, but it is as though they preached under constraint or dictation. 
Either they are high-flown and exaggerated, or else punctilious and re- 
served ; weighing each word as if they were repeating a task ; always 
artifical, never themselves : as if committed to a thesis, which they must 
defend at all risks, and to which all facts must be accommodated, or else 
denied. Hence, do what they will, there is a distinction between them- 
selves and the cause they advocate, which cannot fail to strike the most 
ordinary listener ; their words no longer carry the moral argument (^^^/c?) 
TCLGTLg) with them that they once did even among their followers ; and the 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 165 

judgment of public opinion on them is, that they are vapid and destitute of 
force by comparison " (pp. 57-62). 

32. "My lord, it is anything but my intention to excuse or extenuate the 
scandalous irreverence that prevailed shortly before our ow^n days, and I 
fear is not extinct yet, amongst Anglican clergymen in administering the 
sacraments of the Church ; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that it 
followed naturally from their low views of them, and that their low views 
of them were precipitated by the audacity that centuries ago was not afraid 
to say of the Eucharist, ' Sacerdos creat Deum ; ' of penance, ' Deus 
remittit culpam ; Papa vero culpam et poenam,' and the like. But, taking 
our own view of the Blessed Eucharist into account, is there or has there 
been any tale of irreverence towards it amongst Anglicans, comparable for 
horrors with the history of poisoned chalices and poisoned Hosts amongst 
ourselves formerly, the extent of which is made patent to this, day by the 
special precaution taken whenever the Pope celebrates mass most sol- 
emnly, that no such harm may befal him — 'Avant qu'il arrive' — I am 
quoting from a well, known precis of the ceremonies at Easter in Rome — 
" on a coutume de faire-Pepreuve des especes de la maniere suivante : Le 
Diacre prend une des trois hosties qu'il a mises en ligne droit sur la patene 
et la rend au Prelat-Sacriste. Quand celui-ci Ta recu, le Cardinal-diacre 
prend de nouveau I'uue des deux qui reste : et apres Tavoir fait toucher 
interieurement et exterieurement au calice et a la pateno, il la consigne au 
Prelat-Sacriste, qui doit la consommer aussitot, ainsi que la premiere, le 
visage tourne vers le Pape. Le troisieme et derniere hostie est employee 
pour le sacrifice. Le Cardinal prend les burettes du vin et de Feau, et vers' 
un pen dans la coupe, que lui presente le Prelat-Sacriste, dont ce dernier 
doit boire immediatement le contenu.' * 

33. '• Such perversion of the life-giving sacrament to destroy life, as had 
to be specially guarded against in this way whenever the Vicar of Christ 
pontificated, is absolutely without parallel in the annals of the Anglican 
Church since the Reformation. So that, notwithstanding our high views 
of it, the worst known profanations of it have been amongst ourselves " 
(pp. 74, 75). 

''What I have seen of Roman Catholics myself, since joining their 
Church, all points to the same conclusion. Till then, I knew them only by 
report, which, founded on prejudice, was far from being in their favor ; 
and I was horrified to find how shamefully it had misrepresented them. I 
found them— I mean the educated classes— all that in a general estimate 
members of a Christian Church should be : God-serviug, charitable, con- 
scientious, refined, intelligent; and I could discover nothing idolatrous or 
superstitious in their worship, nor anything at variance with first princi- 
ples in their daily life. At home or abroad I was equally surprised to find 
them so difierent from what my traditional informants had described them, 
with so much to admire where I had supposed there was so much to repro- 
bate. But afterwards — when my first emotions consequent on this discov- 
ery had subsided— when I came to ask myself the question, are these, then, 

* L'annee Liturgique, p. 158. 



166 AFTERPIECE TO THE 

the only true Christians that you have ever known in life ; and till you con- 
versed with them, had you never conversed with a true Christian before ? I 
can scarce describe the recoil that it occasioned in me ! Why, my own fa- 
.her and mother would compare with the best of them in all the virtues or- 
dinarily possessed by Christians living in the world, and discharging their 
duties conscientiously towards God and their neighbors, in, through, and 
for Christ. ' All for Jesus,' was as much their motto as it could be of any 
parents in Christendom ; and well indeed would it be for all Roman Cath- 
olic children if they were blessed with no worse fathers and mothers than 
mine. And I have, or have had relatives and friends in numbers, members 
of the Church of England, whose homes I will undertake to say are to all 
intents and purposes as thoroughly Chi'istian as any to be found elsewhere; 
and it would be sheer affectation or hypocrisy in me were I to pretend the 
contrary ; or else to claim for my own friends and relatives any peculiar 
excellence distinguishing them from the average specimens of the Angli- 
can body. For a calm, uupresuming, uniform standard of practical Chris- 
tianity, I have seen nothing as yet amongst ourselves in any country supe- 
rior to that of the English parsonage and its surroundings ; go where I 
will, I am always thrown back upon one of these as the most perfect ideal 
of a Christian family ; a combination amongst its members of the highest 
intelligence, with the most unsullied purity and earnest faith I ever wit- 
nessed on earth. It was a privilege to have witnessed it. It was not far 
from Brackley. You may have known several such yourself. On describ- 
ing the ' daily round ' of Christian life in the English Church— such as I 
had been accustomed to from a child — to the excellent priest who received 
me into communion on the Continent — our family praj^ers, our grace before 
and after meals, our readings of the Scriptures, our observance of Sunday, 
our services at church, our Sunday schools — what did he do but mount his 
pulpit the Sunday following, and embodying all that I had told him in 
fervid discourse, expatiate to a fashionable congregation iu Paris on the 
many lessons of piety which they had to learn from their separated breth 
ren on the other side of the Channel. ' Such, too, was our general prac- 
tice,' he said to me in a private conversation, ' before the Revolution : and 
we hope to recover it : but as yet there are few families Avhere it exists.' 
Of my countrymen, he observed, ' Leur bonne foi est acceptee pour leur 
vraie foi ' I took this explanation on trust at the time, but have since given 
it up as inadequate. For if it be said that faith and integrity of purpose 
make members of the Church of England what they are without the Sac- 
raments in mature life, by what argument, I should like to know, can it be 
proved that it is not to their faith and integrity of purpose solely that 
members of the Roman Catholic Church are indebted likewise for all the 
progress they make ? The only test of the efficaciousness of the Sacra- 
ments appreciable by common sense, lies in their influence upon conduct. 
If, therefore, it were capable of proof, as distinct from assertion, which it 
is not, both that all the Sacraments administered in the Church of Eng- 
land but one were shams ; and all administered in the Church of Rome, 
without exception, realities, how comes it that we are not incomparably 
more exalted characters ourselves than we were formerly ; or that Roman 



COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 167 

Catholic countries on the Continent are not incomparably more penetrated 
to the core with Christianity than England? Both these points, I dare 
say, might be affirmed by some ; but they are denied, and I maintain with 
much more reason, by others ; and therefore at best it can only be the de- 
gree to which the thing exists, not whether it exists at all, which is in 
question " (pp. 62-65). 

35. '' To come to my conclusions. The conviction impressed upon me 
by what I have heard and seen at home and abroad, is that English Chris- 
tianity — by which I mean that of members of the Church of England in 
general, I cannot speak from experience of any other — is as good and gen- 
uine, and for ordinary purposes as beneficial, as what is found in other na- 
tions — France, Spain, and Italy, for instance — so that either it is produced, 
fed, and nourished by all the Sacyaments, as theirs is ; or else, produced, 
fed, and nourished by a single Sacrament, it penetrates society and forms 
character to the same extent as that which has the support of all the Sac- 
raments, and is no less efficacious for good in most other respects. It may 
be isolated, but such is the position of England politically as well as geo- 
graphically ; its peculiarities are of a piece with the national character, it- 
self having its weak as well as its strong side ; its shortcomings, historically 
traceable to the sins of our forefathers in no small degree. Among the 
strong points attributable to its influences are a strong love of honesty in 
intention, of truthfulness in language, and of uprightness and manliness 
in conduct ; and a still stronger abhorrence of falsehood and treachery to 
engagements in every form. Its virtues belong mostly to the practical and 
domestic order. Its weak points are too great self-reliance, too much dispo- 
sition to criticise, too little faith in the Unseen. As a general rule, Roman 
Catholics are weak where Anglicans are strongest, and strong where An- 
glicans fail. Such results are due to the system in each case, showing im- 
perfections in each. Anglicans may be compared with Roman Catholics in 
this country, as boys brought up at a public school in England, with boys 
brought up at a private school or else at home. Anglicans may be compared 
with Roman Catholics abroad as men educated at Oxford or Cambridge, 
with men educated at the University of Paris, Munich, or Padua. Funda- 
mentally, their faith and practice is the same ; but they have been formed 
after different models in both (pp. 70, 71). 



NOTE I. 



1. " The Church of England has been the instrument of Providence in 
conferring great benefits on me ; had I been born in Dissent, perhaps I 
should never have been baptized ; * * * As I have received so much good 
from the Anglican Establishment itself, can I have the heart, or rather, the 
want of charity, considering that it does for so many others, what it has 
done for me, to wish to see it overthrown ? I have no such wish while it 
is what it is, and while we are so small a body. Not for its own sake, but 
for the sake of the many congregations to which it ministers, I will do 
nothing against it. While Catholics are so weak in England, it is doing 



168 AFTEEPIECE. ? 

our work ; and though it does us harm in a measure, at present the balance 
is inour favour."— Newman, Apologia^ pp. 322, 323; Amer. Ed. 

2. '' I trust that all European races will ever have a place in the Church, 
and assuredly I think that the loss of the English, not to say the German 
element, in its composition has been a most serious evil. And certainly, 
if there is one consideration more than another which should make us 
English grateful to Pius the Ninth, it is that by giving us a Church of our 
own, he has prepared the way for our own habits of mind, our manner of 
reasoning, our own tastes, and our own virtues, finding a place and thereby 
a sanctification, in the Catholic Church."— /c?. p. 291. 

So then it was Pius IX. that gave Father Newman and his co-religionists 
a Church of their own. Of course, they had none before. Verily, as old 
Chaucer hath it, Murder will out ! , 

3. '' He says that I teach that the celibacy of the clergy enters Into the 
definition of the Church. I do no such thing ; that is the blunt truth. De- 
fine the Church by the celibacy of the clergy ! why, let him read 1 Tim. iii.: 
there he will find that bishops and deacons are spoken of as married. 
How, then, could I be the dolt to say or imply that the celibacy of the 
clergy was a part of the definition of the Church ? " — Id. p. 308. 

4. " Neither did I say that ' Sacramental confession ' was a ' note of the 
Church.' Nor is it. Nor could I with any cogency have brought this as an 
argument against the Church of England, for the Church of England has 
retained Confession, nay. Sacramental Confession. * * * If that form" 
(in the 'Visitation of the Sick') "do^s not contain the profession of a 
grave Sacramental act, words have no meaning."— /c?., p. 308. 



NOTE K. 

[From Sir James Ware's History of Ireland. Dublin : 1705.] 

By the Parlianient at Trim, Henry VI, 1447. 

" That every Man Shave his upper lip, else to be used as an Irish Enemy." 

"That the Sons of Husbandmen and Labourers should follow their Fa- 
ther's Calling. 

Under Edward IV., 1465 : 

"For making it lawful to kill Thieves or Kobbers, having no Men of 
good Name in English Apparrel in their Company." 

" For the Irish within the Pale to wear English Habit, take English 
Names, and Swear Allegiance." — p. 74. 

The Parliament of Dublin, held (1475, Edward IV.) by W. Sherwood, 
Bishop of Meath, Lord Deputy to the Duke of Clarence, gave 

" Leave to any English-man damnified by any Irish-man not amenable to 
law, to reprize himself upon the whole Sept, or Nation."— p. 75. 

Henry VIIL, chap. 10: 

'•^^ All this year " (tenth of Henry VIII.) " Ireland was peaceable." 

Or, as it is phrased in the marginal Index, 

" Ireland pretty quiet this year."— p. 65. 



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